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The Abbess of Port Royal 






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OTHER FRENCH STUDIES 



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MARIA ELLERY MACKAYE 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



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BOSTON 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 MILK STREET 
1892 






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|THE LIBRARY 
j Of C ONGR ESS 

WAIMIMGTOK 



Copyright, 1S91, by Maria Ellery MacKaye. 



All Rights Reserved. 



The Abbess of Port Royal and Other French Studies. 



Typography and Electrotyping by 
C. J. Peters & Son, Boston. 

Press of Rockwell & Churchill, Boston. 



INTRODUCTION 



We sometimes see the remark made, that while 
American women are making large contributions to 
poetry and fiction, they are not yet doing their full 
share of thoughtful and studious literary work. Such 
a volume as the present helps to refute that criticism. 
Many years of enlightened study, both in this country 
and Paris, have helped to mature the execution and 
broaden the background of these French stories. Most 
of the essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, 
the Galaxy > or elsewhere ; and the repeated demand 
at our college libraries — for instance, at Harvard — for 
the detached papers has resulted in the publication in 
this collected form. 

The present writer recalls with a certain pleasure the 
fact that one of the most attractive of these papers — 
that entitled " Provencal Song" — appeared originally, 
through a misapprehension, with his name attached to it 
as author ; he having been merely the medium of com- 
munication between the real writer and the editor of the 
Galaxy. He now regrets that the statement was not 
correct. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

Cambridge, Mass., Aug. i, 1891. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Abbess of Port Royal i 

The Song of Roland 44 

Beaumarchais 65 

French Women before the Revolution 93 

"The Marvels of Mont Saint Michel" 115 

Provencal Song 129 

iii 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 



Qui ne connait pas Port Royal, ne connait pas l'humanite'. — Royer-Collard. 

French Protestantism in the sixteenth century, accord- 
ing to Sainte-Beuve, was the work of the aristocracy, or at 
least of the gentry. Port Royal was the religious expres- 
sion of the best part of the middle classes in France. 

In 1599, the last year of the sixteenth century, little 
Jacqueline Arnauld, a child of seven, was appointed coad- 
jutrix to the lady abbess of Port Royal, while her sister 
Jeanne, two years younger, was made abbess of the neigh- 
boring convent of Saint Cyr. Antoine Arnauld, father of 
these children, and of a numerous progeny besides, was an 
eminent lawyer of Huguenot descent ; and their grand- 
father, M. Marion, advocate-general of Henry IV., was 
a favorite of that monarch, who was not very strict, as we 
know, in his ideas about abbeys and sacraments. He 
probably considered this a legitimate and honorable method 
of providing for the younger daughters of his friends. The 
Pope's bull, however, confirming these appointments, was 
not forthcoming. Antoine Arnauld had made a great 
reputation by a famous plea against the Jesuits, instru- 
mental in procuring their recent expulsion. His cour- 
ageous eloquence had won from the University of France 



2 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

an official expression of everlasting gratitude, but it had 
also secured to him the undying hatred of the " Order," 
and of his friends at court. Everything went on as if the 
confirmation had been issued in due form. Little Jeanne 
went to Saint Cyr to perform her duties by proxy, and 
Jacqueline was sent away from home to a convent, to be 
trained for her new responsibilities, and to be initiated 
into her religious life. The choice of abode was a strange 
one, for she was sent to Maubuisson. 

Midway between Creil and Paris, on the Chemin du fer 
du Nord, near the station of Saint-Ouen-l'Aumone, where 
you change cars for Dieppe, rise the ruins of this stately 
abbey, founded by Blanche, mother of Saint Louis. Here 
Jacqueline dwelt for two years, under the care and guidance 
of Madame Angelique d'Estrees, Abbess of Maubuisson 
and Bertaumont, the unworthy sister of the far-famed 
Gabrielle. At first, Madame d'Estrees had only presided 
over the Abbey of Bertaumont, near Amiens, where Henry 
IV. was a frequent visitor. It is said that Gabrielle com- 
plained of being banished so far from Paris, and begged 
her royal lover to give her sister charge of some other con- 
vent not so remote. So the abbess of Maubuisson was 
notified that another would be appointed in her stead, and 
the king signified his wishes, convoked the chapter in per- 
son, and installed Madame Angelique and her fair sister 
in their new domain. Thus, in the shadow of the royal 
amours, and under the influence of such a woman, Jacque- 
line passed two years of her childhood and received her 
first impressions of convent life. Once, during this period, 
she accompanied the abbess on a visit to Maubuisson, was 
confirmed there, and took Madame d'Estrees' own name, 
Angelique. The old abbess of Port Royal had just died, 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 3 

and a new nomination was to be sent to Rome, no longer 
of Jacqueline Arnauld, as coadjutrix, but of Angelique 
Arnauld, as abbess, and her age was stated as seventeen, 
when, in fact, she was hardly nine years old. Even then 
difficulties were made, and, only after a great deal of 
adroit diplomacy in support of the falsehood, the Pope's 
consent was obtained, and the bull issued, investing Ange- 
lique with the dignity of the abbess of the monastery of 
Port Royal, where she now took up her abode, after being 
regularly installed in presence of an august assemblage. 

The abbey of Port Royal des Champs, about eighteen 
miles to the west of Paris, lies in a narrow valley, com- 
pletely shut in by wooded hills. It was founded in the 
year 1204, by Eudes de Sully, Bishop of Paris, and Mathilde 
de Garlande, who had made a vow for the salvation and 
safe return of her husband, a crusader with Foulques de 
Neuilly. The name is said to come from the Low Latin 
word borra or porra, signifying a hole full of brambles and 
stagnant water, only too descriptive of the original state 
of the valley. Twelve years after its foundation it was 
called " Portu-Regio," thus sanctioning the legend of 
Philip-Augustus, who, having lost his way in the chase, 
took refuge in a little chapel dedicated to Saint Laurence 
on this spot, and founded the abbey in grateful recognition 
of the shelter afforded, thence called Port Royal. So says 
tradition, but historical records do not confirm the story. 

The convent belonged to the Order of Saint Bernard ; 
but some of the first nuns were Benedictines, and they 
were under the supervision of the monks of Citeaux, at 
the neighboring convent of Vaux de Cernay, now a pictur- 
esque and imposing ruin, belonging to Madame Nathaniel 
Rothschild. Vaux de Cernay was founded in 11 28, by 



4 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

Simon de Montfort, also a patron and benefactor of Port 
Royal. Thibaut, grandson of Mathilde de Garlande, be- 
came the abbot of Vauxde Cernay, and evidently regarded 
with great favor the convent near by, founded by his 
grandmother. During the visits he made to Port Royal as 
superior, he inhabited a small detached building near the 
porter's lodge that ever after went by his name. 

Four hundred years had passed away since Mathilde de 
Garlande kept her pious vow, when the child abbess came 
into possession of her new domain, no longer a stagnant 
fen, but a fair and fertile valley, embosoming a goodly 
convent. The rule had been very much relaxed, as was 
generally the case at that period, and more or less disorder 
prevailed, though the epitaph of the old abbess, who had 
lately died, recorded that " she had not neglected her con- 
vent, and had fed her nuns well." At the time of the 
accession of Mere Angelique, the confessor was an igno- 
rant old monk, who did not understand his " Pater," could 
not say one word of the catechism, and never opened a 
book but his breviary. There had been no preaching at 
Port Royal for the last thirty years, except on the rare 
occasions when a nun took the veil. They went to com- 
munion once a month and on high feast days, always 
excepting that of the purification, that came in carnival 
time when all the house was in confusion, and the con- 
fessor and the nuns had as much as they could do to pre- 
pare for masquerades. The sisters followed the fashion of 
wearing masks and gloves to preserve their complexions. 
There were only thirteen nuns in all, and the eldest, 
thirty-three years old, was soon sent away by Madame 
Arnauld for unseemly conduct. The young abbess led 
a regular life and conducted all the services, beginning 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 5 

with the matins at four o'clock. The rest of the time she 
played or rambled about the place, attending particularly 
to one of the regulations that directed the lady abbess to 
take the community to walk after vespers. Rainy days 
she read romances, or the history of Rome, by way of 
recreation. The prioress attended to all the material 
wants of the house. There was not much luxury, for they 
were not rich and the servants were wasteful, but there 
was a great deal of liberty in private expenditure, and 
some of the nuns had their own furniture and silver ser- 
vice. The Arnauld family exercised a vigilant oversight, 
Madame Arnauld, especially, often arriving from Paris un- 
expectedly ; but all was quiet and orderly, and the general 
of the Order, on his annual visit of inspection, pronounced 
everything satisfactory, and increased the number of nuns 
to sixteen. One day Henry IV., hunting in the neighbor- 
hood, called at the abbey to see Antoine Arnauld, Ange- 
lique's father, then on a visit to the convent, during the 
parliamentary recess. The youthful abbess went out in 
great state, at the head of all her nuns, to meet the king. 
She was mounted for the occasion on high-heeled over- 
shoes, and the king complimented her on being tall for 
her age. He promised to come back and dine the next 
day, but the hunt taking him in another direction, he sent 
his excuses in due form, and then shouted as he passed 
close under the walls, on horseback, "The king kisses 
the hands of the lady abbess." This was his first and last 
visit to Port Royal ; little else occurred to break the mo- 
notony, and after five long years Angelique grew weary of 
a life that began to inspire her with disgust. She con- 
fided in no one, however, and when people suggested that 
she was not bound by vows made when she was a minor, 



6 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

she never appeared to entertain the idea, and discouraged 
such remarks. She began, however, to make and receive 
visits, proceedings that interfered with the regularity of 
convent life, and displeased her mother, who did not spare 
remonstrances and exhortations. Angelique saw at last 
that she must submit to the rule, or else afflict her parents 
and do discredit to her position. She gave up her excursions, 
and tried for a time to console herself by reading " Plutarch's 
Lives," and other profane books ; but, in spite of this diver- 
sion, her life grew so intolerable that she meditated escape, 
dreamed of marriage, and seriously planned taking refuge 
with her Huguenot aunts at La Rochelle. On the eve of 
carrying out this design, she fell ill, probably from ner- 
vous excitement, and was taken home on a litter. She 
was tenderly cared for in her father's house in Paris, and 
on her recovery, the affectionate child had lost the courage 
to distress those who loved her by such a scandal. It is 
possible that in her delirium she may have betrayed her 
secret ; at all events, one day, soon after her recovery, her 
father surprised her by suddenly presenting an illegibly 
written page, laying it before her, and saying in a per- 
emptory tone, " Sign this, my daughter, there, in that 
place," pointing out the spot for the signature. One 
glance convinced her that it was a confirmation of her 
vows, but she did not dare to resist, and wrote her name, 
"ready to die with shame and anger," as she said after- 
wards. Disheartened and humiliated by this trick, still 
feeble from severe and prolonged illness, she returned dis- 
consolately to Port Royal and the hated convent-life ; but 
the glad welcome of the nuns, who had feared to lose her, 
made her a little more reconciled to what she began to 
regard as an inevitable fate. During the following Lent, 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 7 

wanting a book to read, and afraid to ask for profane liter- 
ature, she took up a volume of meditations, left by a 
Capuchin monk at the convent, thought it beautiful, and 
found it consoling. 

While this comforting impression was still vivid, a 
Capuchin presented himself one night at the convent-gate, 
asking permission to preach. They had just returned 
from the walk after vespers, and Mere Angelique at first 
refused on account of the lateness of the hour, but finally 
consented, and the sisters gathered in the church to hear 
the sermon. Any change was a welcome relief from the 
wretched preaching of the students from Citeaux, who 
usually officiated at Port Royal, and this service at the 
close of day was a variety. The monk took for his sub- 
ject the humility of the Son of God, and his birth in the 
manger. Mere Angelique never remembered distinctly 
what he said ; but during the sermon her heart was touched 
so that all at once her condition seemed as glorious as it 
had till then appeared grievous, and she rejoiced, in- 
stead of sorrowing, at the irrevocable nature of her vows. 
This hour of her life was the first gleam that broadened 
later into the perfect day. It would have seemed a natu- 
ral impulse to confide in the man whose sermon had been 
the occasion of this miraculous change ; but with charac- 
teristic dignity the girl of fifteen sent one of the sisters 
to thank the monk and to speed him on his way. After- 
wards it was known that he was a most disreputable 
character, who had been already a cause of scandal in sev- 
eral communities. An older man, the austere Pere Bernard, 
was taken into her confidence and consulted in regard to 
the various reforms that she now began to feel it her 
bounden duty to make. This Capuchin was very inju- 



8 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

dicious, however, and aroused at once the violent oppo- 
sition of the best and most religious of the nuns, who felt 
aggrieved by his wholesale denunciations of their quiet 
lives. He drew up a set of new regulations in strict con- 
formity with the old Benedictine rule, and submitted them 
to the prior of Citeaux, in spite of the urgent remonstrance 
of Mere Angelique, who knew the prior well, and was sure 
that he would disapprove and complain to her father. 
The laxity of this dignitary may be inferred from the fact 
that he had recently been present at a theatrical entertain- 
ment given by " Les Dames de Saint Antoine." The 
play was the " Cleopatra " of Gamier, and the nuns were 
dressed in men's clothes for the male parts. Other dis- 
tinguished ecclesiastics were also present, and the abbess 
was no less a person than Mademoiselle de Thou, sister of 
the president and aunt of the historian of that name. In 
spite of this array of respectable laxity, reform was coun- 
selled by the Capuchin advisers of Mere Angelique. One 
monk, Pere Pacifique, sympathized with her ardent desire 
to go away, no longer into the world to get married, but 
as a lay sister to some other convent of stricter rule. 
Pere Bernard, however, insisted that she should stay where 
she was and reform Port Royal. A whole year went by, 
troubled by interior and exterior conflict. At times God 
seemed to veil his face again, and there was a constant 
struggle with the nuns, who thought their young abbess 
unreasonable and extravagant, and who strenuously opposed 
all her plans. She had recourse in secret to the greatest 
austerities, deprived herself of food and rest, dropped burn- 
ing wax upon her bare arms, and committed other follies 
that she was the first to blame in after years ; but, as she 
said, "I tried everything then." Madame Juneauville, 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 9 

one of the nuns, employed by her mother to watch her, 
slept in her cell for that purpose ; but when it was dark 
Mere Angelique would often creep softly away into a 
garret and spend the night in prayer. Warned, as she 
had foreseen, by the prior, M. Arnauld arrived one day 
unexpectedly, drove away all the Capuchin advisers with 
expressions of contempt and dislike, and carried his daugh- 
ter off to his chateau of Andilly to enjoy the season of 
vintage. But home was no longer charming to her ; her 
father condemned all her plans of reform, and she re- 
turned to Port Royal as soon as he would allow her to do 
so, ill with intermittent fever and very unhappy. One day 
a student from Citeaux preached on the text, " Blessed are 
they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." After 
the sermon one of the girls employed as a domestic in the 
convent said to her, " Madame, if you chose, you might be 
one of those blessed ones." Mere Angelique rebuked the 
girl for her boldness, but the words sank into her heart. 
Not long after, she took occasion to renew her vows pub- 
licly, and made a solemn declaration of her resolve to lead 
in future a truly religious life. Some of the sisters fol- 
lowed her example ; but she saw no way of accomplishing 
her reforms, and despondently recurred at times to her 
plan of going, as a lay sister, to another convent. One day 
the prioress sought an interview and inquired the cause of 
her great melancholy ; learning the reason that she no 
doubt divined, she told her that the sisters wished her to 
say that they preferred to accede to her wishes to seeing 
her so ill and depressed, and that they would oppose her 
no longer. Unspeakably rejoiced, she at once appointed 
a day, convoked the chapter, and proposed community of 
goods in accordance with the first vow of poverty. The 



10 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

sisters at once agreed, and brought all their possessions, 
even their clothing, to swell the common fund. One, 
however, could not give up her little garden. The next 
step was to enforce the sanctity of the cloister, to shut the 
world out from the convent. Mere Angelique felt that 
she herself must set the example, and determined to allow 
no exceptions, not even in the persons of her immediate 
family. At Easter, one of the nuns took the veil, and for 
the first time the numerous visitors were excluded from 
the interior of the convent. This caused great dissatis- 
faction, and some of the sisters said. " Wait and see when 
M. Arnauld comes ; his daughter will not dare to keep him 
out." They had not long to wait. Mere Angelique wrote 
to her family to prepare her father for the change in the 
arrangements ; but either they did not dare to tell him, or 
he did not choose to believe them. On the twenty-fifth of 
September, 1609, word came to Port Royal that Monsieur 
and Madame Arnauld, with three of their children, the 
eldest brother and two sisters of the abbess, might be 
expected in the course of the morning. 

The keys were taken from the custody of the portresses 
and intrusted to sisters who, by watching and prayer with 
Mere Angelique, had been nerved to resist the assault. 
While the community was at dinner, between ten and 
eleven o'clock, the sound of carriage-wheels was heard, 
and those who were in the confidence of the abbess 
repaired to their posts. Mere Angelique, who had been 
for some time at prayer in the church, hastened to the 
main entrance, at which her father was already knocking. 
She opened the wicket. M. Arnauld demanded instant 
admission without listening to his daughter, who entreated 
him to go to the parlor and hear what she had to say. 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL II 

But he only knocked the louder and clamored for admit- 
tance, ending by overwhelming Mere Angelique with 
abuse. The mother, standing near by, added her vehe- 
ment reproaches, calling her an unnatural child. The 
brother, just twenty-one, accused her of being nothing 
less than a monster and a parricide, and shouted to the 
nuns " to come and interfere, and not allow a man like his 
father, and a family like theirs, to be thus outraged and 
insulted." One old sister, the same who had held to her 
garden, responded from within, and declared that it was 
shameful not to open the door for M. Arnauld, while the 
domestics, assembled in an inner court, murmured loudly 
at the ingratitude of the lady abbess. M. Arnauld, mean- 
while, perceiving that all this noise was useless, bethought 
him of a stratagem, and demanded his little daughters, 
Agnes and Marie-Claire, then on a visit to their sister, 
thinking no doubt to rush in as they opened the door. 
But Mere Angelique, hastily intrusting to a faithful sister 
the key of a little door communicating with the church, 
sent them out by that way. The brother continued his 
abuse of Mere Angelique before these little girls, but was 
interrupted by Agnes, who exclaimed, looking as grave 
and dignified as a Spanish Infanta, " My sister is only 
doing as she is commanded by the Council of Trent." 
" Listen to her," cried the brother. " Here is another 
one talking to us of canons and councils." During all 
this scene, the two sisters who had come in the carriage 
stood apart, sad and silent, aghast at their father's rage, 
and distressed by the knowledge of what Mere Angelique 
was suffering. M. Arnauld ordered that the horses should 
be instantly reharnessed to the carriage ; but on the reit- 
erated supplications of his daughter, he consented to go 



12 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

first into the parlor for a moment. There he changed his 
tactics, and when she drew back the curtain from the 
grating their eyes met for the first time that day, and she 
saw the pale, excited face of her offended father. He 
spoke to her tenderly, and adjured her by the memories 
of the past, by their love for one another, not to treat him 
so ignominiously ; saying at last, as he saw she remained 
inflexible, " Since it is all over, then, and we shall never 
meet again, remember my last words : Do not injure your- 
self, my child, by indiscreet austerities." These tender 
accents were too much for her to bear ; she fell fainting 
to the floor. He tried in vain to open the grating, and 
called loudly for help. The nuns, not knowing what had 
happened, were afraid to show themselves ; but the family 
came to the rescue, and thundered at the convent gate till 
they made themselves understood. All the sisters rushed 
to the parlor, and after some time Mere Angelique was 
restored to consciousness. Turning her eyes at once 
towards the grating, she saw her father anxiously watching 
her, and feebly murmured, " If he will only grant me 
this, not to go away to-day ! " He could not refuse. The 
abbess was carried to her room, but she soon insisted on 
being brought back to a bed placed close to the grating, 
where she could talk to her family. The conversation 
became gentle and affectionate. That day and the next 
she reasoned with her father, and at last persuaded him to 
consent to his exclusion from the interior of the convent. 
The agreement was afterward modified so that he could 
give orders in regard to the buildings and the gardens ; but 
he never again set foot in the cloister. The 25th of Sep- 
tember, la journee du gtiichet, as it is called, was ever after 
celebrated in the annals of Port Royal, and after this 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 1 3 

coup d'etat Mere Angelique had no more difficulty in carry- 
ing out the reforms she desired in her own convent. 
Even when she thought best to dispense with the pecu- 
niary aid hitherto derived from her father, she was cheer- 
fully seconded by the nuns, who had begun to regard her 
as a saint ; and her whole family treated her with affec- 
tionate reverence. Jeanne, now Mere Agnes, became her 
prioress ; Marie-Claire, as well as a remarkable younger 
sister, Marie Eugenie, entered the convent. In time to 
come we shall see her mother, also, a nun at Port Royal, as 
well as her sister, Madame Le Maitre, who had made an 
unhappy marriage, and whose five sons subsequently 
swelled the ranks of the Solitaires. 

After some years, Port Royal came to be considered as 
leaven for other communities, and sisters from that con- 
vent were in great demand to inaugurate reform else- 
where. Mere Angelique herself was sent to Maubuisson, 
where, since the death of Henry IV., disorders of all sorts 
were still rife, no longer shielded by the name and pres- 
ence of the king. Louis XIII. himself gave the order for 
investigation and reform in this instance. Several ecclesi- 
astics, sent there to report, had been shamefully mal- 
treated, however, and the last royal commissioner had 
been seized with his suite, shut up in one of the towers of 
the abbey, and kept there for four days on bread and 
water, the commissioner himself receiving lashes every 
morning by the express command of the lady abbess her- 
self. Such high-handed defiance could not be allowed to 
remain unpunished. With the consent of the Marechal 
d'Estrees, her brother, and that of other members of the 
culprit's family, it was decided to proceed at once to 
extremities, and the abbot of Citeaux presented himself 



14 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

at Maubuisscn, as though in his ordinary official capacity. 
Madame d'Estrees refused to appear, however, and the 
abbot was forced to depart without seeing her. Arrest 
and imprisonment were the only resource. After a long 
delay, the requisite order was obtained from Parliament, 
and the following year the abbot left Paris once more for 
Maubuisson, this time with a provost and archers to do his 
bidding. The escort was left at Pontoise, and the abbot 
presented himself alone at the convent-gate. During two 
days he tried peaceful negotiations in vain ; Madame 
d'Estrees remained invisible, said she was ill, and laughed 
to scorn the threat of arrest. Finally, one morning the 
provost and archers were admitted at an early hour by 
the abbot to the outer part of the convent where he had 
been lodged. Under his orders, they broke open the 
doors, escaladed the walls, and gained access to the inte- 
rior. The abbess was not to be found, however, and only 
at nightfall was her hiding-place discovered. She stood 
at bay, and made such desperate resistance that they were 
forced to carry her, half undressed, on a mattress to the 
carriage they had in waiting, and in this state she was 
taken to a Magdalen asylum, where orders were given that 
she should be kept in close confinement. Mere Angelique 
was appointed to the vacant place, and, accompanied by 
her sister Marie-Claire and two or three other nuns, she 
arrived at Maubuisson a fortnight after the capture of 
Madame d'Estrees. She found in the abbey about twenty 
nuns, almost all sent there against their will, and shame- 
fully ignorant of the first rudiments of a religious educa- 
tion. They spent a great deal of time in preparing for 
dramatic entertainments that took place in the presence of 
large companies of invited guests. There were all kinds 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 1 5 

of amusements besides. Summer days, after hurrying 
through vespers and complines, the prioress took the nuns 
to row on the ponds near the highway to Paris, and the 
monks of Saint Martin de Pontoise, near by, often came 
of an evening to dance with the sisters. Mere Angelique 
and her nuns must have seemed to these people like 
beings of another world. She tried at first to win the old 
inmates, whom she had known during the two years she 
passed at Maubuisson, and after a time a certain amount 
of decency and outward conformity was secured ; but to 
create a different atmosphere, she made the experiment of 
receiving at once into the convent thirty young girls, with 
whom she labored night and day more hopefully and not 
in vain, as it proved. All at once Madame d'Estrees 
escaped from durance vile and burst upon them at the 
abbey. The following account is from the lips of Mere 
Angelique, taken down by her nephew, M. Le Maitre. 

" In the month of September, 1619, Madame d'Estrees 
appeared unexpectedly at Maubuisson, accompanied by 
the Comte de Sanzai and several gentlemen. She 
obtained access to the convent by means of a false key, 
procured for her by one of the sisters, a worthless person. 
As we were entering the choir she approached me, and 
said : ' I have come, madame, to thank you for the care 
you have taken of my convent, and to beg you to return 
at once to your own, and to leave Maubuisson to me.' I 
answered, ' Madame, I would certainly do so if I could ; 
but I am not here, as you know, by my own will, but by 
that of the abbot of Citeaux, our superior. I came by his 
order, and I can only go away at his command.' She 
replied that she was the abbess, and that she intended 
to take her rightful place. I said, * Madame, you are no 



1 6 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

longer the abbess, since you have been deposed.' She 
answered, i I have appealed from that decision.' I said, 
' The decree holds good, as the sentence of deposition has 
not been annulled ; and I must consider you as deposed, 
since I am established in this house by the abbot of 
Citeaux, with the authority of the king ; therefore, do not 
take it ill that I seat myself in the abbess' place,' and 
thereupon I sat down. Supported by the newly received 
sisters, I then addressed the community, and recommended 
them to partake of the sacrament during mass, and to 
invoke the Divine aid in the storm that was impending. 
Most of them were already prepared for the communion, 
since it was a festival of our Order. I felt sure that she 
would turn me out ; but great was my astonishment after 
dinner, when the confessor came to tell me that I must 
retire and yield to force. I answered that I should not do 
so, that it was against my conscience. But I was still 
more surprised later, when I saw him enter the church in 
company with Madame d'Estrees, the Comte de Sanzai, 
and four gentlemen with their swords drawn, and exhort 
me to yield, to avert the consequences of resistance. One 
of the gentlemen presently fired off a pistol, thinking 
doubtless to terrify me. But I answered, composedly, that 
I would not leave, unless forcibly compelled to do so ; for 
only thus could I be excused in the sight of God. My 
nuns all crowded round me, putting their hands in my 
girdle, so that I could hardly breathe. Madame d'Estrees 
became very angry and abusive, and reaching out her 
hand, she touched or pulled my veil a little, as if she 
would pull it from my head. Whereupon the sisters 
changed from lambs to lions, not suffering that I should 
be harmed. One of them, Anne de Sainte-Thecle, a tall 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 1 7 

girl of noble birth, took a step towards Madame d'Estrees, 
and said, ' Wretched creature ! are you so bold as to 
touch the veil of madame of Port Royal ? I know you 
well ; I know what you are ! ' and so saying, in presence of 
these men with drawn swords, she snatched the veil off 
her head and threw it far from her. Then Madame d'Es- 
trees, seeing me resolved not to go, ordered the gentlemen 
to take me out by force, which they did, holding me by 
the arms. I did not resist, for I was glad to go away with 
my nuns from a place where there were such men, from 
whom I had everything to fear for the nuns and for me. 
But it did not suit Madame d'Estrees that they should go 
too, and she called to the gentlemen to put me all alone 
in a coach that was in waiting. As soon as I was seated, 
however, nine or ten of the nuns jumped in, three mounted 
on the box beside the coachman, and three got up behind 
like footmen ; the rest all clung to the wheels. Madame 
d'Estrees ordered the coachman to whip up his horses ; 
but he answered that he dared not do it for fear of killing 
some of the nuns. Then I threw myself out of the 
coach, and was followed by all the sisters. I bade them 
get some cordials, because the pestilence was at Pontoise, 
whither we went, the thirty nuns walking two and two in 
procession along the road. The lieutenant of Pontoise, a 
friend of Madame d'Estrees, passed on horseback, and 
laughed to see us. No doubt the poor man thought she 
was safely re-established. The people of Pontoise came 
out to receive us with blessings, saying, as we passed, 
1 There are the good nuns of the abbess of Port Royal. 
They have left the devil behind at Maubuisson.' We 
entered the first church on our way. It was the Jesuits', 
and they came forward to greet us very courteously ; but 



1 8 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

after we had said our prayers, we left, and outside I met M. 
Du Val of the Sorbonne, whom I knew very well. He said 
that all the religious houses of Pontoise would be open to 
receive us ; but I preferred to go somewhere by ourselves, 
and the prior offered me his own house, which I accepted. 
Meantime, an express had been sent to Paris to alarm the 
family. My father was away, but my brother made com- 
plaint and obtained an order for the arrest of Madame 
d'Estrees, who, with the Comte de Sanzai, fled so precipi- 
tately on the approach of the military, that she left her 
casket behind her. The soldiers went on to Pontoise, and 
brought us back at ten o'clock at night, in procession, as 
we went, escorted by a troop of one hundred and fifty 
archers on horseback, each bearing a lighted torch in his 
hand." 

For some time it was necessary to keep a mounted 
patrol, day and night, at the abbey, to guard against sur- 
prise. Louis XIII. finally appointed as abbess Madame 
de Soissons, sister of the Duchess de Longueville, hoping 
that her high rank would put an end to the plots of the 
friends of Madame d'Estrees. Mere Angelique was 
requested by the king to remain, however, at Maubuisson, 
till the Pope's bull should arrive, confirming the appoint- 
ment of Madame de Soissons. The double rule was not a 
success. Mere Angelique was thought too austere, and 
there was much dissatisfaction expressed that she had 
burdened the convent with her thirty new nuns, many 
without portions, and some of humble birth. Before 
going back to Port Royal, she wrote to ask if the com- 
munity would consent to share their poverty with these 
thirty women, who had proved so faithful. A glad answer 
came promptly, signed by all the nuns, declaring that so 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 1 9 

far from regarding their coming as a burden, they should 
consider it a benediction. The income of Port Royal was 
twelve hundred dollars a year, one-fifth that of Maubuis- 
son. Mere Angelique sent the letter to the general of 
the Order, obtained his approval, and then wrote to her 
mother, asking her to send coaches enough to transport 
the thirty nuns from Maubuisson to Port Royal. They 
were sent at once, with an attendant for each carriage. 
Mere Angelique accompanied them only as far as Paris, 
where it was necessary for her to remain a few days. 
Before taking leave of the sisters, she charged them, as 
soon as they caught sight of the hills that shut in the 
valley, and espied the steeple of the church above the 
tops of the trees, to repeat all together, " Set a watch, O 
Lord, before my mouth ; keep the door of my lips," and 
from that moment to keep silence, till she herself should 
arrive and let loose their tongues. " This was done," says 
the chronicler, "lest the excitement and disturbance of 
their arrival should be an occasion of much idle talk and 
great waste of time." But as it was necessary that they 
should be known apart, she told each one to pin on her 
sleeve her name, written on a piece of paper. On the 
arrival of these timid mutes, who felt, as Racine says, as 
if they were bringing starvation to Port Royal, Mere 
Agnes and all the sisters came forth to meet them, sing- 
ing the Te Deum. Like a quantity of wood thrown on a 
blazing fire, this large accession of numbers, far from 
depressing, increased the fervor of the community. 

While at Maubuisson, Mere Angelique made the ac- 
quaintance and enjoyed the friendship of Saint Francis 
de Sales, and through him knew Madame de Chantal, with 
whom she became intimate. He went first to Maubuisson, 



20 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

at her request, to confirm one of that neglected sister- 
hood, then returned several times, once staying nine days. 
Mere Angelique sent him to Port Royal to see her sister, 
Mere Agnes. He was enchanted with the spot. " Truly 
a port-royal," he writes, and he ever after spoke of the 
place as "his dear delight." All the Arnauld family 
shared his friendship. Mere Agnes always wore on her 
person one of his precious letters to Madame Le Maitre, 
who made at his knees a vow of perpetual chastity, before 
her husband's death allowed her to take the veil. The 
youngest son, afterwards the great doctor, received his 
blessing, and the eldest, M. d'Andilly, followed him about 
like his shadow. 

Mere Angelique, feeling that " God was visibly with 
this man," begged him to be her spiritual director, and 
complained that hitherto she had been obliged to seek 
counsel here and there, as seemed best at the time. 
" Like a bee gathering honey from different flowers," 
added Saint Francis. " A comparison," says Sainte- 
Beuve, " savoring less of Calvary than of Hymettus." 
He rallied her also on her passion for austerities, of which 
he disapproved, and tried to convince her that it was 
unreasonable to expect the best service from a human 
being, any more than from a dumb animal, when they 
were deprived of proper rest and food. He writes : 
" Dearly beloved daughter, sleep well. By degrees, you 
may restrict yourself, since you wish to do so, to six hours ; 
but believe me, to eat little, to labor hard, to have great 
anxieties, and to deprive the body of sleep, is to drive a 
tired, unfed horse to death." He said that her great 
activity of mind ran away with her, and that she was in 
too much of a hurry to attain spiritual perfection. "Why 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 21 

not," he continues, " catch small fish oftener, instead of 
such large ones once in a while ? " and he reminds her 
that the finest trees are of the slowest growth. At that 
time he was certainly in sympathy with Port Royal, of 
which Saint-Cyran had not yet taken possession. Later, 
Sainte-Beuve thinks, he would have disapproved with 
Fenelon. 

After her return from Maubuisson, Mere Angelique 
received a letter approving her action in taking the thirty 
sisters to Port Royal. It came from a remarkable man, 
who made the community his stronghold, stamping it 
ineffaceably as Jansenist, Augustinian, or, as he would 
have said, as Christian. This man was Jean du Vergier 
de Hauranne, Abbe de Saint-Cyran. Of a good family of 
Bayonne, he studied first at a Jesuit college, and was then 
sent to Louvain at the same time with the celebrated 
Jansenius. They met afterwards in Paris, both eagerly 
seeking the pure Christian doctrine, and determined to go 
back to the earliest authorities in their search for truth. 
De Hauranne, recalled to Bayonne on his father's death, 
carried his friend home with him, and there at Champre, 
an estate on the seashore, near Bayonne, belonging to the 
family, they remained five years absorbed in the study of 
the Scriptures and the Fathers, especially Saint Augus- 
tine. In after years, Saint-Cyran liked to show his friends a 
large old arm-chair with a desk attached. In it Jansenius 
studied, one may say lived ; for he rarely went to bed at 
night. No wonder that Madame de Hauranne used to 
say to her son, " Take care, Jean, or you will kill that good 
Fleming, making him study so hard." All their exercise 
at Champre consisted in games of " battledoor and shut- 
tlecock," in which they became fabulously adroit. At the 



22 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

end of these five years, sure of what they had only sur- 
mised in the beginning, that the church had lapsed into 
Pelagianism, they espoused the cause of God and Saint 
Augustine, declaring that if man can save himself, the 
logical inference must be that the intervention of the 
Redeemer becomes unnecessary, and that thus to exalt 
the Father at the expense of the Son virtually does away 
with Jesus Christ. Their belief that man has sinned, that 
for this deep-seated disease there is but one Healer, is 
Protestant-Calvinistic doctrine ; but Saint-Cyran and his 
disciples accepted the " Real Presence " and the sacra- 
ments, and had no idea of leaving the church, though 
Saint-Cyran said boldly that for six hundred years the 
church could hardly be said to have existed, so great 
had been the corruption ; that the bed of the river had 
remained, but that the water had ceased to flow ; and he 
stigmatized the Council of Trent as a mere political 
assembly. Both Jansenius and he wrote ponderous Latin 
folios in support of these doctrines, dividing the name of 
Augustine between them for the titles, Petrus Aurelius 
and Petrus Augustinus ; but while Jansenius confined 
himself to the doctrine, Saint-Cyran applied it to life, and 
Port Royal became the nursery of his seedlings. " What 
is the knowledge of a truth that is never put in practice ? " 
he used to say. The "Frequent Communion," written in 
French by the great Arnauld, and translations of Saint 
Augustine, by d'Andilly and others, helped to disseminate 
their teachings far and wide in France, among the laity 
and in religious communities. 

Good men, intellectually timid, like Saint Vincent de 
Paul, shuddered at these bold utterances, and used all 
their influence in Rome and at the court of France to 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 2$ 

silence Saint-Cyran. He excited a great deal of ecclesi- 
astical jealousy by his potent influence as a spiritual 
director, and in this way had incurred the enmity and 
secured the ill-will of the notorious Capuchin, Pere Joseph. 
Richelieu himself was at first inclined to favor and flatter 
the abbe. Once passing through the antechamber, on his 
way to a royal audience, he said to the assembled court- 
iers, putting his hand on Saint-Cyran's shoulder as he 
spoke, " This is the most learned man in Europe." But 
the abbe's persistent refusal of bishoprics, his criticism of 
the decree annulling the marriage of the king's brother, 
and his intimacy with Jansenius, who had just published 
" Mars Gallicus," a Latin pamphlet opposing Richelieu's 
policy, showed that he could not be won over, and caused 
him to be regarded by the great minister with suspicion 
and dislike. Finally, his conversion of M. Le Maitre, the 
eminent lawyer and brilliant orator, who at once disap- 
peared from the world, attracted general attention to the 
wide-spreading spiritual dominion of the man, and Riche- 
lieu determined to put him out of the way. " This 
Basque," he said, " is more dangerous than six armies. If 
they had imprisoned Luther and Calvin when they began 
to dogmatize, it would have saved a great deal of trouble." 
Saint-Cyran received a domiciliary visit, his papers were 
seized, and he was taken to Vincennes and kept there on 
a vague charge of heresy a whole year before he could 
obtain an examination. Even then he was not set at liberty, 
and he was only released, two years after his incarcera- 
tion, at the death of Richelieu. His health had suffered 
from the severity of his confinement, and he did not live 
very long after recovering his freedom. It was a day of 
silence when the joyful news came to Port Royal. Mere 



24 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

Angelique could not keep it to herself, and told the nuns 
by untying her girdle before them. She had found at 
last her ideal director, a man of adamantine purity, im- 
mense enthusiasm, great tenderness, and a boundless 
devotion to truth, and she was guided by him to the end. 
Ampere calls him the Lycurgus of that Christian Sparta. 

For some years there had been a Port Royal also in 
Paris, a large house in the Faubourg Saint Jacques, now the 
hospital of La Maternite, purchased with the aid and at 
the suggestion of Madame Arnauld, at a time when the val- 
ley seemed particularly malarious. Indeed, only in mod- 
ern times has the drainage been complete and the lovely 
spot made salubrious. Here in Paris, young girls were 
educated ; and the same work was carried on for boys 
by the Solitaires, in the deserted house of Port Royal 
des Champs, and in neighboring chateaux belonging to 
noblemen friendly to the community. 

When M. Le Maitre retired from the world after his 
conversion, he lived, at first, a life of perfect seclusion in 
a little house built for him adjoining the convent. His 
brothers and nephews joined him, also under Saint-Cyran's 
influence ; and there gradually was formed a remarkable 
group of men, — physicians, men of letters, soldiers, 
scholars, and ecclesiastics, — resolved to lead a life of 
self-renunciation and consecration, and who, directed by 
the abbe from his prison, took for their rallying-cry, 
"Thought allied with faith," and made redemption of 
souls their mission. These men were the Solitaires. 
They took no vows ; some came and went ; but the ma- 
jority remained at Port Royal des Champs, systematically 
dividing their time between religious exercises, literary 
pursuits, teaching, and manual labor. The nuns also 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 2$ 

carried on various industries, and they made themselves 
farmers, gardeners, carpenters, and shoemakers in the 
service of these sisters, whom they called " Nos dames, 
nos maitresses, et nos reines." They devised a plan of 
religious service to alternate with the convent hours, so 
that prayer and praise might rise perpetually at Port 
Royal. Of these men the saintly princess, Madame 
Elizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., writes : " Their theology 
apart, that I do not understand, these gentlemen of Port 
Royal were holy persons. What a life they led, compared 
to ours ! " Their schools, called " Les petites ecoles de 
Port Royal," soon acquired a great reputation. Their 
text-books were novelties, written by the Solitaires them- 
selves, who anticipated in many ways modern ideas in 
regard to education. In learning languages they believed 
that a great deal of translation should precede grammar, 
and they gave their pupils copious draughts of literature. 
The list of their books is very long ; but we may mention 
the French grammar by the great Arnauld, aided by 
Lancelot ; methods of learning Greek, Latin, Spanish, 
and Italian, and the " Garden of Greek Roots," in French 
verse, by Lancelot and De Saci. They also made trans- 
lations of Phaedrus, Terence, Plautus, Cicero, and Virgil. 
They paid less attention to Latin versification than was 
usual at that time ; but occasionally a subject was given 
to the older classes on which they were to improvise con- 
jointly a copy of Latin verses. The work was done in 
class ; every one was at liberty to contribute phrase or 
epithet, to suggest, to criticise, obtaining permission to 
speak by raising the hand, and the observation of parlia- 
mentary rules obviated all confusion. Greek was taught 
in these schools for the first time without a Latin medium, 



26 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

a great innovation, and when the " Garden of Greek Roots " 
is criticised it must be remembered that there was then 
no such thing as a Greek and French dictionary in exist- 
ence. They preferred young scholars, chosen from good 
but not necessarily rich or noble families. People of 
means paid five hundred livres a year for instruction, which 
was gratuitous to others. They taught children to read 
first in French instead of in Latin, another innovation ; 
and Pascal suggested the method they employed of pro- 
nouncing at first only the vowel sounds of the alphabet, 
leaving the consonants to be learned afterwards in combi- 
nation with the vowels ; the base, it will be seen, of the 
phonetic system now generally adopted in France. For 
writing, they were the first to use metal pens, for the pur- 
pose, they say, of "saving the time of teachers and 
scholars." Saint-Cyran agreed with Erasmus that six 
scholars were enough for one teacher, and when they had 
twenty-four pupils, they placed them in four separate 
rooms, with a master for each. At the Chateau de 
Chesnai a whole wing was given up to the children. 

The severest punishment was to be sent home, or to 
see some service assigned to a servant that the pupil was 
accustomed to perform for his teacher. Great gentleness 
and indulgence were required of the teachers, who were 
to endeavor to make study as interesting as amusement. 
There were out-of-door recreations and such indoor amuse- 
ments as billiards, backgammon, chess, or historical games 
of cards. A formal politeness was enforced, every one 
being addressed as Monsieur. Saint-Cyran had always 
wished to devote himself to children, and was very fond 
of teaching them. Before his imprisonment, he went 
every other day to Port Royal, superintended the boys' 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 2J 

work, more especially their themes, and gave them a com- 
mentary on Virgil. The largest of these schools were at 
the Chateau de Chesnai near Port Royal, and in a cul-de-sac 
of the Rue Saint Dominique in Paris. These were broken 
up on the charge of being nests of heresy, and the teach- 
ers were obliged to disguise and hide themselves, in con- 
stant danger of arrest and imprisonment. The Hotel de 
Longueville and other great houses sheltered two or three 
at a time. De Saci, nephew of Mere Angelique, was 
thrown into the Bastille, where he passed two years, occu- 
pied in translating the Old Testament in French. He 
had already translated the New. Copies of his Bible, 
printed by the Elzevirs, and smuggled into Paris in prod- 
uce-wagons, under convoy of some man of mark, were 
afterwards widely distributed. 

When the nuns returned to Port Royal des Champs, 
the Solitaires betook themselves to Les Granges, a farm 
on the heights, less than a third of a mile from the abbey. 
They did not see much of the sisters, though in such close 
sympathy and working always in concert. Mere Angelique 
did not approve of very frequent visits, and the cloister 
rule was strictly observed. The uncle of Madame de 
Sevigne, a devoted friend of Port Royal, built a new clois- 
ter for the nuns, and after its completion sent to ask if he 
could be admitted only once, accompanying his request by 
the present of a basket of rare fruit. Mere Agnes an- 
swered, " I thank you humbly for the fruit. You have the 
privilege of giving as much as you like and of granting 
every favor that is asked. Both these privileges are de- 
nied us, so that you cannot see the inside of our building 
on account of an angel with a flaming sword at the gate, 
I mean the anathema of the church." The Chevalier de 



28 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

Sevigne entered the promised land at last ; but only after 
his death. He was buried in his cloister. 

Another note from Mere Agnes to her nephew shows 
that she was more indulgent than her sister in regard to 
visits from the Solitaires. 

Les Granges. 
To M. Le Maitre : — 

My very dear Nephew, — I believe that you think I have gone back to 
Paris, or else that I have come here to live as if I were excommunicated, 
it is so long since you have asked for me ; and I avail myself of the privi- 
leges of an aunt and an old woman to ask you to come to the parlor of 
Sainte Madeleine at noon to-day to be scolded for your conduct. 

At one time Mere Angelique had been made superior 
of the convent of the Saint Sacrement in Paris, afterwards 
incorporated with Port Royal, and on this occasion, when 
a uniform dress was required, the sisters adopted the 
white scapulars of the Saint Sacrement with a large red 
cross in front, a very striking costume. 

A new superior at Citeaux threatening to put an end 
to all eccentricity — meaning austerity — at Port Royal, 
Mere Angelique, alarmed, petitioned for a change of 
jurisdiction, and obtained permission from the Pope to 
belong to the diocese of Paris. She had no more monkish 
interference to apprehend ; but the archbishops of Paris 
were very much controlled by the court, and this influence 
proved, in the end, fatal to Port Royal. There had been 
still another important change. While Louis XIII. was 
besieging La Rochelle, his mother, Marie de Medicis, paid 
a visit to the abbey, and said to Mere Angelique, as she 
was going away, " Have you nothing to ask of me ? the 
first time I go to a convent, I always grant some favor." 
Mere Angelique asked that the abbess should be in future 
elected every three years, instead of being chosen for life. 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 20, 

This was done, and she immediately resigned her place, 
together with her coadjutrix, Mere Agnes. In course of 
time they were both re-elected, but Mere Angelique had 
reason frequently to repent of her abdication. 

The wars of the Fronde disturbed the industrious, 
peaceful seclusion of the valley. The convent was put in 
a state of defence, and the Solitaires manned the walls 
and made ready for a siege. Even M. Le Maitre wore a 
sword by his side, or carried a musket over his shoulder. 
The nuns of neighboring convents flocked in to seek an 
asylum, and were received with open arms, as well as the 
poor peasants, who were allowed to store their valuables 
in the church itself. The convent courts were full of 
cattle, and the monastery looked like Noah's ark. 

Port Royal had helped Cardinal Retz when, as arch- 
bishop of Paris, he was sorely in need, and he was always 
amiable to Mere Angelique and often friendly to the com- 
munity ; but no reliance could be placed upon him, and 
little sympathy was possible between these disciples of 
Saint-Cyran and that Don Juan of a prelate. As some 
one said, " He, a Jansenist ? Impossible ; to be a Jan- 
senist, you must be a Christian." 

The Jesuits incessantly defamed Port Royal, and Jan- 
senius' book, " Petrus Augustinus," had been condemned 
by a bull of Urbain VIII., confirmed more definitely by 
his successor, Innocent X. The Syndic of the Faculty 
of Theology in Paris had distinguished himself, moreover, 
by denouncing specifically five propositions, which he said 
were contained in the book. From this time the enemies 
of Port Royal knew where to aim. The Jesuits in Rome 
then sent word that if some of the French clergy would 
ask for the condemnation of these five propositions, the 



30 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

Holy Father would not be averse to granting their request. 
Saint Vincent de Paul eagerly headed the movement in 
Paris, and the petition was sent to Rome without first 
submitting it to the general assembly of the clergy then 
in session. On account of this irregularity, Innocent 
hesitated ; but the regent, Anne of Austria, at the sug- 
gestion of Saint Vincent de Paul, signified to the Pope 
her wish that he would act promptly and decisively in the 
matter, whereupon he signed the bull. 

This caused great rejoicing in the Jesuit camp ; all 
courtiers disclaimed the slightest Jansenistic taint, and 
such a horror prevailed in these circles, of the Augustinian 
doctrine of grace, that a story is told of an orthodox 
bishop, on a visit to an abbey of his diocese, who hearing, 
as he entered the refectory, these words pronounced by 
the reader : " It is God who worketh in us to will and to 
do," called out,. " Close that book, and bring it to me at 
once." He was obeyed, and the heretical author was 
discovered to be Saint Paul ! 

Mazarin cared little for these theological disputes ; but 
he owed the Jansenists a grudge and was suspicious of 
their amicable relations with Retz. Gondi at first resisted 
the king's order that the bishops should formally accept the 
Pope's bull, but when Anne of Austria said cajolingly that 
he must not refuse the first favor she had ever asked of 
him, the gallant courtier gave way, and that barrier was 
thrown down. 

This was the Formulary that all priests, monks, and 
nuns were eventually required to sign : " I submit in 
good faith to the ordinances of his Holiness, Innocent X., 
and I condemn in my heart and by word of mouth the 
five propositions of Cornelius Jansenius, contained in the 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 3 1 

book entitled 'Petrus Augustinus,' which the Pope and 
the bishops have condemned, which doctrine is not that of 
Saint Augustine, but which the said Jansenius has per- 
verted contrary to the meaning of the worthy doctor." 

The Parliament of Paris was in no haste to register the 
decree requiring these signatures, and Mazarin declared 
openly that the king had already done more than he ought 
for the Jesuits, who gave him more trouble than all the 
government of the realm. In the mean time the Sorbonne 
called to account for his doctrines the author of the " Fre- 
quent Communion," the great Arnauld, youngest brother 
of Mere Angelique. He was publicly censured ; but it is 
asserted that the Sorbonne had been packed for the vote 
with a large number of newly made doctors, ignorant and 
obsequious to the regent. While the trial was going on, 
she remarked one day to the Princesse de Guemene, a 
great friend of Port Royal, " Your doctors talk too much." 
— "That need not disturb you, madame," retorted the 
princess ; "you have already on the benches more mendi- 
cant monks and friars than you need." — "And there are 
more to come," said the queen, haughtily. — " Do put an 
end to this affair ! " Mazarin exclaimed one day to one of 
the doctors ; " these women do nothing but talk about it, 
and they understand it no better than I do." Arnauld's 
defence was in Latin, and Port Royal made use of Pascal's 
pen to appeal from the Sorbonne to the public. Then 
appeared '• Les Lettres Provinciales." This fierce assault, 
these deadly blows dealt by a skilful and unsparing hand, 
fairly took away the enemy's breath. The immediate 
success is well known : the letters became the rage, the 
next issue was eagerly anticipated, and choice circles 
gathered to hear them read aloud in the salons of the 



32 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

Duchesse de Longueville, the Princesse de Conti, the Prin- 
cesse de Guemene, and Madame de Sable. It only made 
it more interesting that no one knew exactly when the 
next letter would appear or where they were printed, and 
that the bookseller had made his fortune and had been 
thrown into the Bastille. Pascal's relations with Port 
Royal had attracted very little attention, and he was 
known principally as a mathematician and man of fashion ; 
but a rumor of his being the author obliged him to hide 
and disguise himself. He lodged at this time, under an 
assumed name, in a small inn near the Sorbonne, directly 
opposite the college of the Jesuits, — in the lion's mouth, 
as it were. His brother-in-law, M. Perier, from Auvergne, 
arriving in Paris for a few days, went to the same house, 
where he received one day a visit from an old acquaintance, 
one of the Fathers opposite. In the course of conversa- 
tion the priest said, " Do you know that some people sup- 
pose that your brother, M. Pascal, is the author of these 
letters ? " M. Perier replied as unconcernedly as he 
could, while he was painfully aware that behind the half- 
closed curtains of the bed near which they were seated, 
twenty or more copies of the next letter, fresh from the 
press, were spread out to dry. When the guest had 
gone, Pascal came down from his room overhead, heard the 
story, and took possession of his property. There was 
now a lull. The Solitaires, dispersed by a royal mandate, 
quietly swarmed again in their old haunts, the schools 
revived, and everything in the community was prosperous 
and peaceful, when the long-gathering storm broke over 
Port Royal. The king issued an order to disperse boarders 
and scholars, novices and postulants, and furthermore 
commanded that none should be received in future. Mere 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 33 

Angelique had truly said, " Yes, we shall kill the dragon ; 
but he will be our death." M. Singlin, too, the superior, 
was also sent away. Mere Angelique hastened to Paris 
to aid her sister, Mere Agnes. She took leave of her 
nuns as if she should never see them again. She was 
nearly seventy years old, and very feeble. To her brother, 
M. d'Andilly, she said, as he was helping her into the car- 
riage, " Keep a brave heart." — " Trust me, my sister," 
was his response ; " I shall not be found wanting." — " My 
brother, my brother," she replied, " let us be humble, and 
remember that humility without firmness is cowardice, 
but that courage without humility is presumption." In 
her clear vision she saw the temptation to martyrdom, and 
dreaded for her friends vain-glory in suffering for God 
almost as much as faint-heartedness. Deprived of her 
director, M. Singlin, and not choosing that her beloved 
nephew, De Saci, should expose himself to the danger of 
arrest by coming to the house on her account, she said to 
the sisters who expressed their sorrow for her deprivation, 
" It does not trouble me ; I know that M. Singlin is pray- 
ing for me. What more could I ask ? I respect him very 
much ; but I do not put a man in the place of God. My 
nephew without God's help could do me no good, and God 
without him shall be all in all." They walled up the 
doors, shutting them out from their own gardens ; and 
when some of the sisters said, " Who knows but that they 
may be shutting themselves out of heaven ? " she reproved 
them, saying, " Do not speak so, my daughters, but pray 
to God for them and for us." After a few days her feeble- 
ness increased, dropsical symptoms appeared, and she was 
confined to her bed. Troubled by the idea that the nuns 
would keep a record of her last words and actions as if 



34 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

she were a saint, she tried to speak very little, and to do 
nothing that could excite remark. She knew that they 
had already done so to some extent, and she had a horror 
of the twaddle in the " Lives of the Saints," and of sen- 
timental death-bed recitals. She summoned all her energy 
to write a letter to the queen-mother, pleading the cause 
of Port Royal, defending the community from the charge 
of heresy, and invoking in their favor the testimony of 
Saint Francis de Sales and Madame Chantal. She quoted 
from Saint Therese to remind her majesty that in a court 
it is not always an easy matter to ascertain the truth. 
This duty accomplished, she laid herself down to die, say- 
ing, " It is time for a little sabbath rest." Strange to 
say, only towards the last was this admirable woman freed 
from an overpowering dread. Of this terror her brother 
writes : " May it not show an ardent imagination, an unu- 
sually powerful conception of the holiness and justice of 
the Supreme Being, denoting a great soul ? " 

The history of Port Royal has sometimes been called 
nothing but a quarrel between the Jesuits and the Arnauld 
family. As we stand by the open grave of their acknowl- 
edged head, let us pass them in review as if they gathered 
from far and near from the spirit-land to do her reverence. 

Antoine Arnauld, father of Mere Angelique, had twenty 
children, ten of whom lived to grow up. His wife took 
the veil after her husband's death, and passed the last 
twelve years of her life in the Paris convent. The eldest 
son, M. Arnauld d'Andilly, who was the first to feel Saint- 
Cyran's influence, was a genial person, more receptive 
than original, very susceptible to female charms, courtly 
and amiable, but upright and loyal withal, — like seaweed, 
waving about on the water, but firmly fastened to the 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 35 

rock beneath. He was more literary than any other of the 
family, and did Port Royal good service by his finished 
translations from Saint Augustine, his constant oversight 
and criticism, and his knowledge of the world. He re- 
fused a place offered him in the Academy ; and upon this 
occasion Richelieu made the rule, ever since strictly 
observed, that no places should ever be offered, and that 
candidates for the honor should make personal application. 
M. d'Andilly lived to a great age and served to the last as 
an usher, — a sort of self-appointed master of ceremonies 
for the nuns in their dark days, a connecting-link between 
Port Royal and the world without. He was one of the 
Solitaires, built himself a house on the hill near Les 
Granges, and spent his own fortune and part of his eldest 
son's also in draining and embellishing the grounds of the 
convent. His especial delight was in raising fine fruit, of 
which he presented propitiatory offerings to the queen- 
mothei, Madame de Sable, and Mademoiselle Montpensier. 
" La grande Mademoiselle " gives an amusing and charac- 
teristic account of a visit she paid him in "his dear 
desert." He had sent her a basket of cling-stone peaches, 
with an injunction not to eat them till they were "dead- 
ripe." The fruit, by the way, was not meant for the con- 
sumption of the community, but was usually sold and the 
proceeds given to the poor. 

When the final dispersion came of the House in Paris, 
M. d'Andilly was on the spot, affording his protection to 
the sisters, escorting the nuns to their carriages, and, when 
his daughters' turn came, first leading them into the 
church before the altar as if to consecrate them anew in 
the cause of truth and to the service of God. Constant 
as he was to his outlawed belief, and courageous in his 



36 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

devotion to his persecuted family and friends, he never 
appears to have forfeited the royal favor ; and the queen- 
mother could ask, even while urging on the enemies of 
Port Royal, "Does d'Andilly love me still?" He was 
also a great favorite at the Hotel Rambouillet, and in his 
youth belonged to that set. He had two daughters, Mere 
Angelique Saint-Jean and Sister Madeline Therese, both 
nuns at Port Royal. Of the eldest her father said to 
Madame de Sevigne, " Depend upon it, I myself and all 
my other children are stupid in comparison with Ange- 
lique." On her, indeed, the mantle of her aunt seemed 
to fall. M. d'Andilly had six sisters, who were all nuns : 
Madame Le Maitre, Mere Angelique, Mere Agnes, Sister 
Anne Eugenie, Sister Marie-Claire, and Sister Madeleine 
Sainte Christine. Of his three brothers, the eldest was 
the Bishop of Angers, and the second, Simon, a young 
soldier, was killed at Verdun. The youngest became cele- 
brated as " the Great Arnauld," eulogized by Voltaire, and 
for whom Boileau wrote the epitaph beginning : — 

" Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persecute." 

Madame Le Maitre had five sons, all Solitaires : M. Le 
Maitre, the eminent orator, and MM. de Saci, Sericourt, 
Saint-Elme, and Valemont. The name Saci is thought to 
be an anagram of Isaac. 

Mere Angelique was sometimes considered too austere. 
She was certainly less indulgent than Mere Agnes, and 
had little patience with the wearisome caprices of some 
of their fine-lady converts ; but no real grief, even of a 
crowned head/appealed to her in vain. Marie de Gonzagne, 
beloved of Cinq-Mars, afterwards Queen of Poland, had a 
lodging at Port Royal des Champs, and she appeared as 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL Z7 

a mourner at Saint-Cyran's funeral. After her departure 
for Poland, she kept up a constant correspondence with 
Mere Angelique, and offered the community a refuge 
from persecution in her kingdom when she learned that 
they were seriously thinking of embarking for America. 
When we read the description of Mere Angelique's ten- 
derness to Jacqueline Pascal at the time of her taking the 
veil, we are reminded of what the sisters used to say of 
her : " If she is as terrible as an angel, she can comfort 
you like one." 

The community was accused by its enemies of the 
heinous sin of not worshipping saints, and of caring little 
for images ; and we might think Port Royal free from 
superstition, were it not for the famous story of the cure 
of Pascal's little niece by the application of a reliquary 
containing one of the sacred thorns from the crown worn 
by Jesus, to a tumor of the lachrymal gland. The cure 
was said to have been immediate and miraculous. Pascal 
himself was profoundly impressed, never seeming for a 
moment to doubt the authenticity of the miracle ; and 
Mere Angelique gives Marie de Gonzague a detailed 
account of the cure, appearing to believe in it devoutly. 
Then a daughter of Philippe de Champagne was cured at 
Port Royal of a chronic disease, in answer, it was said, 
to the prayers of the community, — an event commemo- 
rated by her father in a picture in the Louvre represent- 
ing Mere Agnes and his daughter. Long after the de- 
struction of Port Royal this idea of miracle-working 
revived among the so-called Jansenists, and reached its 
climax in the extravagances of the " Convulsionnaires of 
Saint Medard." 

At the time of the departure of Mere Angelique for 



38 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

Paris, Jacqueline Pascal had been left in charge of Port 
Royal des Champs, and upon her devolved the responsi- 
bility of accepting or rejecting the Formulary when it was 
presented for signature. The decision was made even 
harder on account of a preamble written by Pascal him- 
self, at the request of some of the clergy, who did not 
object to leaving a loophole for the consciences of the 
sisterhood. But the anguish of these women was great. 
If the preamble was obscure, the Formulary was clear. 
How could they condemn the doctrine of Jansenius in 
which they believed, or assert that the Five Propositions 
were in a book that they had never read, and which they 
could not read ? Jacqueline Pascal writes in a letter, in- 
dorsed, " To be shown to my brother if he is well enough : " 
" I know the respect I owe the bishops, but my conscience 
will not let me sign a statement that a thing is in a place 
where I have never seen it. . . . How can they cut us off 
from the church ? They can deprive us of the outward 
signs of that union, but never of the union itself so long 
as we have love one for another. . . . How is this that we 
are asked to do different from offering incense to idols, 
and thinking that we are absolved because we have a piece 
of the cross hidden in our sleeves ? " (an allusion to a 
passage in one of the " Lettres Provinciales ") ; and farther 
on, " I know that it is not for women to defend the faith, 
but when bishops are as timorous as women, it befits 
women to be as brave as bishops." Jacqueline's rebuke 
sank into her brother's heart. From that time he rejected 
all subterfuges and compromises ; and when his sister 
died, not long afterwards, he only said to those who 
brought the tidings, " God grant that our end may be like 
hersl" 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 39 

• When it was urged upon Mere Angelique-Saint-Jean 
that she should sign the Formulary as an act of submis- 
sion, to avoid scandal, she replied : " To me it seems as 
if a surgeon had bandaged my arm for no cause whatever, 
and when it had become inflamed and swollen, proposed 
to cut it off to avoid gangrene. Should I not be justified 
in saying to him, ' Cut off your bandage, but do not cut 
off my arm ' ? " When threatened with the papal anathema, 
she said: "There is one consolation: the successors of 
Saint Peter are very apt to imitate his haste in drawing 
the sword, and they strike without awaiting their Master's 
command. Then Jesus comes and heals the wound." 

These women were no respecters of persons, and it is 
not hard to understand how offensive their practical, un- 
compromising republicanism must have been to the court 
hard by, at Versailles. So long as they did not bow down, 
Louis XIV. felt as if he did not really reign. They stood 
steadfast, gently inflexible, bearing in mind how Mere 
Angelique had said, " I fear nothing that is not eternal," 
refusing to compound with their consciences in spite of 
the persuasions and entreaties of their friends, and the 
threatening taunts of their enemies, who wielded against 
them, defenceless as they were, the combined power of 
the king and pope. " Pure as angels, and proud as 
demons," said the archbishop of Paris. 

When the king was told of their determined disobedi- 
ence, he resolved that the punishment should be condign. 
The nuns were forcibly removed and imprisoned separately, 
or two or three together, in different convents. Some 
gave way, but most remained firm. After a long time the 
unrepentant sisters who still remained alive were sent 
back to Port Royal, where they remained imprisoned three 



40 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

or four years under an interdict, deprived of the sacra- 
ments, and with sentinels posted night and day outside 
their walls. At last, under a new Pope, the " Peace of 
the Church" was proclaimed, the stubborn bishops were 
pardoned, and Louis XIV., in good humor after his Peace 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, declared that he would not be " more 
severe with the nuns than the Pope had been with the 
clergy." The moment was thought propitious, the sisters 
made a tardy and vague submission, and the interdict was 
removed. Great was the rejoicing in the valley when the 
long-silent bells rang out again. The Great Arnauld, who 
had just been presented at court, said the first high mass 
at Port Poyal, and was still at the altar, when a long pro- 
cession with banners and music from the parish of Magny, 
near by, entered the church to join in their thanksgiving 
services. 

Ten years of prosperity ensued ; but immediately after 
the death of the Duchesse de Longueville, their protect- 
ress, persecution, long smouldering, broke out afresh, and 
in spite of their previous submission, there was a second 
blockade and interdict of thirty years, ending in the forci- 
ble removal of the twenty-two surviving nuns, the young- 
est fifty and the eldest eighty years old. All that was 
asked of them was to allow a notice to be posted at the 
convent gate, stating that they accepted the bull of Inno- 
cent X., and submitted in all things to the papal authority ; 
but they refused, accepted the consequences, and went 
down with their flag flying. They were separated and 
scattered in different convents, where they remained, 
deprived of the sacraments even in their last hours. The 
church, convent, outbuildings, and adjacent houses were 
razed to their foundations, and all the dead removed from 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 41 

the cemetery, by express order of the king. The desecra- 
tion of the graves was frightful, and identification was 
intentionally rendered impossible. At this time Racine's 
remains were removed by his friends to St. Etienne du- 
Mont, in Paris. His aunt had been one of the last abbesses 
of Port Royal. During the last ten years, these secluded 
women had probably excited envy as well as dislike ; for 
they had been courted by the world of fashion to some 
extent, as well as esteemed by many thoughtful people 
who did not accept their doctrine. Ladies of high rank 
were in the habit of going to Port Royal for short religious 
retreats, and the services on holy-days seemed very attrac- 
tive, fourteen or fifteen ecclesiastics often being present 
uninvited. Not that there was any splendor of ritual, or 
luxury of altar-cloth or vestments : the pictures of Philippe 
de Champagne were the only ornaments of the church, 
there was no organ, and the reading and singing, though 
beautiful, were of the simplest kind ; but the fervor of the 
nuns and the quiet of the place constituted a peculiar 
charm. 

The description of Port Royal in the sixth volume of the 
" Clelie " of Mademoiselle Scudery, is purely imaginary : 
but we find this account by a M. Lonail, written in 1693 : — 

" It is not a large monastery, but lodges a goodly num- 
ber. The court is narrow and long, extending from east 
to west. The church, the parlors, and the houses of 
female guests are on one side, and the stables, workshops, 
and houses for ecclesiastics and male guests on the other. 
The cloister and dwellings of the nuns are apart, behind 
the church. The garden extends towards the east, and is 
intersected by a little canal. Towards the south there is 
a shady wood by a brook, called the Solitude. All this 



42 THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 

is shut in by high walls, defended at intervals by towers, 
built during the wars of the Fronde to protect the convent 
from soldiery." After describing the church, the cloisters, 
and the procession, he continues : " At last I left a place 
where I would willingly have stayed all my life. I climbed 
the hill to the left and visited Les Granges, the farm of the 
Solitaires. There I saw the old schools of Port Royal, 
the houses of M. d'Andilly and M. Arnauld, and the Soli- 
tude of M. Pont-Chateau. I turned back to look once 
more on the abbey and the fields tilled by these pious 
men, and bade adieu to this blessed spot ; but the memory 
of my visit lingers like a perpetual feast." 

The destruction has been complete. All that remains 
of the abbey of Port Royal is the dove-cote, a large round 
tower, with a funnel-shaped roof ; fragments of pillars and 
capitals ; the Fountain of Mere Angelique ; a large walnut- 
tree, that goes by her name ; Les Granges on the neigh- 
boring heights ; and the walk called La Solitude, with its 
rusty, ivy-garlanded cross. The church was a fine speci- 
men of the Cistercian architecture in the early part of the 
thirteenth century. A little chapel has been erected on 
the spot where the high altar stood, and here can be seen 
some interesting relics, such as portraits, engravings, and 
manuscript letters. Some of the tombstones, rescued 
from desecration, are preserved in the neighboring church 
of Magny, Arnauld d'Andilly's among the number. You 
can wander about Port Royal at your will, perfectly undis- 
turbed by guides or tourists, pace the Alley of the Soli- 
taires by the side of the brook, that has learned not to 
murmur, and keeps in summer days their vow of silence, 
or throw yourself on the daisied grass by the old fountain 
or in the shade of the walnut-tree of Mere Angelique. If 



THE ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL 43 

you wish to examine the relics, you summon the guardian 
in the employ of the Society of Saint Antoine, to whom 
the property now belongs. He is a gentle old man, up- 
wards of eighty, a schoolmaster at Asnieres for more 
than forty years, proud and appreciative of the treasures 
intrusted to his keeping, and quite imbued with the spirit 
of the place. After speaking of his past life and his age, 
he added: "I am perfectly happy. I am not afraid to 
die ; but I sometimes think that heaven itself cannot be 
more peaceful than Port Royal." 

From Versailles, the distance to the abbey is about 
eight miles, but a pleasant excursion can be made from 
Paris by taking the Chemin de fer de la Bretagne at the 
Gare Mont Parnasse early enough to connect with the 
little patache that goes from La Verriere, the second 
station beyond Saint-Cyr, to Mesnil-Saint-Denis. From 
this hamlet you go on foot. The road winds through 
fields for a mile and a half, skirts a wood, and the top of 
the " Colombier " of Port Royal soon comes in sight. The 
entrance is by a little door in an old stone wall. You can 
return another way by Trappes, a station nearer to Paris 
than La Verriere, but the walk is not nearly so pleasant 
as from Mesnil-Saint-Denis. You pass, however, by Les 
Granges, the farm of the Solitaires. 

People say sometimes, "There is not much to see at 
Port Royal." That is true; but the place is redolent of 
beautiful memories and interesting associations, and the 
peace has not passed away. 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 



Go to the MS. department of the Bodleian Library 
at Oxford, and ask for " Digby 23." You will be 
intrusted with a little volume, worn and old, such as the 
"jongleur" used to take out of his pocket after he had 
tuned his viol at the gate of some walled town or lofty 
turreted castle at the end of his day's journey. This MS. 
is the oldest copy of an older version of a still older 
poem ; for you hold in your hand the work of an Anglo- 
Norman scribe of the twelfth century, the most authentic 
copy of the earliest and most beautiful of the French 
"chansons de gestes," the first of Christian epics, the 
" Song of Roland." 

The last line of the poem reads thus : " Here Theroulde 
finishes his work ; " and it has been said that a tutor of 
William the Conqueror bore this name, that a descendant 
of his was Abbot of Peterborough, that the tutor was the 
poet, and that the abbot had this copy of the poem made 
for the library of his monastery. All this is surmise, 
however. "Theroulde declinet " may mean only the 
copyist ; but it is tolerably certain that this version of the 
epic, dating from the eleventh century, was made up in 
part of shorter poems on the same subject, much older, 
and probably lyrical, such as Charlemagne collected, and 

44 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 



45 



the French women used to sing to the music of the 
clapping of their hands. The jongleur's violin was often 
made of iron or copper, and sometimes he used his sword 
for a bow. So may have done Taillefer, the minstrel, 
when, as Wace relates, he led the van of the Norman 
army at the battle of Hastings, singing this very song 
"of Charlemagne, and of Roland, and of Oliver, and the 
nobles, who fell at Roncesvaux." Thus "to the sound 
of the ' Song of Roland ' England was conquered by the 
Normans." We read how the Saxons spent the night 
before the battle in wassail and revelry, while the Normans 
went to confession and prayed as they kept watch and 
ward. And this song, which inspired them on the 
morrow, is imbued with the glow of the dawn of feudal 
Christianity. These rude soldiers who, says Motley, 
"about this time seated themselves with gentlemanlike 
effrontery on every throne in Europe," were comparatively 
recent converts, and felt like real children of the Church. 
Children they certainly were in their undoubting faith and 
imperfect comprehension of what the new religion meant ; 
but we must not forget that they were still thrilled by the 
narrow escape of Christianity from destruction at the 
battle of Tours, "where the horsemen of the East met 
the footmen of the West, and three hundred thousand 
Arab corpses marked the point at which the flood-tide 
turned." So to them every foe was a Saracen, and every 
infidel a deadly foe. Can we wonder ? 

When Charlemagne, leaning against the window of his 
palace by the sea, watched the white sails of the Norse 
rovers, and wept to think of their ravages after his death, 
he did not dream that descendants of these very Vikings 
would embalm his memory in legendary lore, and hand 



46 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

down his name in imperishable song through ten centuries. 
But so it is. Thus opens the " Song of Roland : " — 

Charles the King, our great Emperor, 
Seven long years has tarried in Spain. 
Down to the sea the haughty land is his. 
Castles and towns with their embattled walls 
Lay low before him. All save one subdued, 
And that one Saragossa, on the height. 
Marsile holds sway there, and he loves not God, 
Adores Apollo, and invokes Mahmoud : 
He can not prosper. 

This confusion of Pagan and Mohammedan beliefs is 
not uncommon in the literature of the Middle Ages. 
Farther on, thus Charles receives the Saracen embassy : — 

In a large orchard sits the Emperor, 
He has beside him Roland, Oliver, 
The great Duke Samson, and Anselm the proud, 
His standard-bearer, Geoffrey of Anjou, 
Gerin and Gerier, and many more. 
Full fifteen thousand gentlemen are there, 
Who come from France, " sweet France." 

White silken stuffs are spread 
Upon the grass. The elders and the grave 
Are playing chess, and some at " trictrac," while 
The agile youths are fencing. At his ease 
Beneath a pine, beside an eglantine, 
In a great arm-chair, all of solid gold, 
Sits Charles the King, who holds sweet France in fee. 
His beard is white, and snowy white his hair. 
So fair his features, and so proud his mien, 
No one need ask, " Which is the Emperor ? " 

The following passage is as remarkable in its way as the 
first quotation : — 

The mighty Charlemagne, by dint of blows, 
For seven long years had kept his hold on Spain. 
He captured castles and he captured towns. 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 47 

The King Marsile grew anxious, and he sent, 
The first year of his stay, to Balingant. 
He was the admiral, the old Emir, 
Who lived in Babylon in Egypt. He 
Had survived Homer and Virgil. Him 
Marsile had asked for help for Saragossa. 
If 'twas refused, Marsile would leave his gods 
And all his idols for the Christian faith, 
To make his peace with Charles. 

The argument of the poem is briefly this : Marsile, a 
Spanish king, threatened in his great stronghold Saragossa, 
sends messengers to Charlemagne to sue for peace. The 
Emperor, advised by Roland, charges Ganelon to convey 
his answer to the Saracen. Ganelon, angry with Roland 
for having suggested that he should go on such a perilous 
errand, secretly plots his destruction. He returns from 
his embassy laden with rich gifts, the price of his treason, 
and announces to Charles the entire submission of 
Marsile, who even promises to be baptized as a Christian. 
He thus succeeds in persuading the Emperor to recross 
the Pyrenees, leaving to Roland the command of the rear- 
guard, which consists of only 20,000 men. Charlemagne, 
in spite of dreams and gloomy presentiments, yields, and 
goes back to France. 

Meanwhile Marsile summons his twelve peers, gathers 
a large army, and comes up with the rear-guard in the 
Pyrenean pass of Roncesvaux, when he is quite sure that 
the Emperor is far away. Oliver, Roland's beloved 
friend and compeer, is the first to discover that they are 
pursued. Three times he entreats Roland to sound his 
horn, the famous " olifant," to call Charles to the rescue ; 
but Roland obstinately refuses. In this part of the poem 
may be remarked the repetitions, or " similar stanzas," 



48 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

about which so much has been said ; some critics urging 
that they are parallel accounts of the same event, frag- 
ments hitched together, while others think that it is 
meant to deepen the impression of the incident. Similar 
cases will occur to students of still older literatures. The 
result may be tiresome, but, as an eminent professor once 
observed, when it was proposed to him to cull only choice 
passages from this very " Song of Roland : " " You must 
have the tediousness, or you will not get a true idea of 
the poem." 

'Tis morning. Oliver ascends a hill, 
Looks to his right across the grassy vale, 
And sees approaching all the heathen host. 
He calls aloud : " Now, Roland, what is this? 
What means yon clamor borne to us from Spain, 
These snowy hauberks and these glist'ning helms ? 
Our men will be astounded at the sight. 
It is Ganilo's work, the traitor, wretch : 
Through him King Charles has brought us to this pass." 
But Roland answered: " Silence, Oliver; 
He is my step-father; no more of this." 

High is the hill where Oliver has climbed ; 
Afar he looks upon the land of Spain, 
And sees the army of the Saracens, 
Their shining helmets gilt and decked with gems, 
Their bucklers, and embroidered coats of mail, 
With spears and gonfanons at lance's point. 
Innumerable squadrons crowd the plains. 
He cannot count them, and he hurries down, 
Hies to the French, and tells what he has seen. 

" Look you," says Oliver, " the Saracens 
Are swarming yonder in a countless host; 
A hundred thousand heathen with their shields. 
Laced are their helmets, and their hauberks white, 
Upright their lances, gleaming their brown spears. 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 49 

French gentlemen, God give you of His strength ! 
You shall have battle : such there never was. 
Stand well your ground, or we shall lose the day." 
The Frenchmen answered : " Cursed be he who flees 1 
Not one of us will fail you for that death." 

Then urges Oliver: "The heathen host 
By far outnumbers us. Friend, sound your horn. 
When Charles shall hear it, they will all come back, 
The king and all his barons, to our help." 
" Far be it from me," Roland answered him, 
" For I should lose my glory in sweet France. 
No. I will strike great blows with Durandal : 
The blade shall be all ruddy to the hilt. 
The wretched pagans in an evil hour 
Came to these defiles : they are doomed to die." 

" I pray you, Roland, sound your olifant, 
For Charles on hearing it will straightway come, 
He and his nobles, to our rescue." " No. 
Now God forbid I bring my friends to shame, 
Or sweet France to dishonor ! " Roland said. 
" But I will strike great blows with Durandal, 
The good sword I have girded to my side : 
The blade shall be all ruddy to the hilt. 
The miscreant pagans in an evil hour 
Have gathered here : they are condemned to die." 

"I pray you, Roland, sound your olifant, 
And Charles shall hear it when he's far away, 
And come with all his army to our help." 
" I will not do it. Not a man who lives 
Shall say I wound my horn for heathen folk. 
Far be it from me to disgrace my friends. 
No. Where the battle rages I shall strike 
Great blows with Durandal — a thousand blows, 
Then seven hundred more, with that good sword 
The Emperor once girded to my side : 
The blade shall be all ruddy to the hilt. 
The French fight well, of that I warrant you. 
The pagan dogs are doomed to die the death." 



50 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

"Tis no dishonor," Oliver replies. 
" I tell you I have seen the Saracens. 
They throng the mountains and they throng the vales ; 
The plains and moorlands are all hid by them. 
Great are the numbers of this foreign host, 
And small our company." Then Roland said: 
" So much the better ! I would have it so. 
I thirst for battle ; and I pray to God 
And all His angels that the land of France 
May never through my means know loss or shame. 
Death rather than dishonor ! Deal hard blows : 
We shall be dearer to the Emperor." 

This poem was evidently written before the Crusades, 
but its animating spirit of hatred of the heathen and love 
of the Church was precisely what made the Crusades 
possible. Is there not a foretaste of Peter the Hermit in 
the benediction given by the soldier-prelate, Archbishop 
Turpin, to the French army, just before the fight? 

Yonder is Turpin, the Archbishop. 
Up to the brow of an o'erhanging hill 
He spurs his horse, and calls out to the French: 
" Sir Knights, our Emperor has left us here. 
We'll do our duty, though we lose our lives. 
Help in the cause of Christ, as need there be, 
You shall have battle. There you see the foe, 
The hated heathen. Now confess your sins ; 
I will absolve you. Then, if you must die, 
You die as martyrs, and the highest seats 
In heaven are yours." The Frenchmen all alight, 
And kneel to take the blessing. They are told 
Their only penance is to deal hard blows. 
So says the good Archbishop. 

The miscreant pagans fiercely ride amain. 
"Look you now, Roland," shouted Oliver, 
"They are upon us, and our liege lord Charles 
Is far away. Oh ! had you blown your horn, 
Charles had been here ; the day would not be lost. 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 5 1 

Cast your eyes upward toward the gates of Spain : 

You see a mournful rear-guard. Men stand there 

Who look their last upon a battle-field." 

And Roland answered: "Shame upon such words! 

Accursed be he who bears a coward heart ! 

Here shall we stand our ground. Ours the good blows. 

We shall be victors." 

Thus Roland exhorts his men before the battle : — 

When Roland sees the battle close at hand, 
Lion nor leopard ne'er more terrible. 
He cheers his men, and says to Oliver: 
" Sir Knight, companion, friend, you greatly err. 
The Emperor Charles, who trusts them to our care, 
Has set aside these twenty thousand men, 
Chosen by him, and well he knows them brave. 
For him we'll suffer, and, if need there be, 
Lay down our lives." 

Great is the battle, marvellous the fight. 
The French deal heavy blows with their good swords : 
They all are ruddy to the jewelled hilt. 
" Montjoie ! " they shout, the Emperor's battle-cry. 
O'er all the field they press the Saracens. 
The pagans see theirs is no easy task. 
Great is the battle, it is horrible — 
A scene of mortal anguish ; men lie there 
By thousands, bleeding, wounded, dying, dead, 
Piled one upon another. On their backs, 
Or faces downward, lie the Saracens. 
Who does not flee cannot escape from death. 

Roland at last, faint from his wounds, and feeling that 
they are in danger of being overpowered, proposes to 
blow his horn ; but Oliver tells him it is useless, and 
upbraids him with not having done so before. The 
Archbishop rides up, reconciles them, and represents to 
Oliver that even now the Emperor may arrive in time to 
give them Christian burial. So Roland puts the " olifant " 



52 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

to his lips, and blows a blast that is heard ninety miles 
away. (The blast, tradition avers, is still resounding and 
re-echoing in those Pyrenean gorges.) Charles hears it. 
Ganelon is discovered to be a traitor, is chained up like 
a bear, and given in custody to the King's scullions to be 
beaten with rods while awaiting his trial. The French 
hurry back, hoping to be in time to rescue Roland. 

How high the mountains and the beetling crags ! 
How deep the gorges, and how swift the streams ! 
Loud blow the trumpets of the Emperor : 
Before, behind, the army loud they blow, 
And answer Roland's horn. 

The Emperor rides on in bitter wrath. 
The French are furious with agony : 
Not one who is not sobbing as he rides ; 
Not one who is not praying God to save 
Roland in mercy till they reach the field, 
And deal brave blows beside him. All in vain : 
It is too late. Alas, they come too late ! 

The poem here consists mainly of descriptions of single 
combats, characterized by ferocity on one side and prowess 
on the other. We pass on to the death of Oliver. 

When Roland sees the cursed heathen folk, 
As black as ink — all black except their teeth — 
He says : " Our death is certain. Frenchmen, strike ! 
Woe to the laggards ! " and his men all rush 
Into the conflict. . . . 

Oliver, overpowered and mortally wounded, kills his 
adversary, the Caliph, and then calls Roland to the rescue, 
who, when he sees his friend dying, mourns over him, and 
faints away on his horse. 

Behold now Roland fainting on his horse ; 
And Oliver, whose life is ebbing fast. 
His eyes are dim, he does not know his friend, 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 53 

And rides to his encounter, dealing him, 

Full on his gilded helm, a dreadful blow. 

It cleaves the helmet, and lays bare his brow. 

The shock restores his consciousness. He says, 

Full gently : " Comrade, did you mean to strike ? 

'Tis Roland, Roland, whom you hold so dear. 

You had not challenged me to fight with you." 

" I hear you, Roland," answered Oliver, 

" I cannot see you, but I pray to God 

To have you in His sight. For that rude blow 

I pray you pardon me." But Roland said : 

" You did not wound me. Here and before God 

I do forgive you." Then they bowed them low, 

Each to the other. In this way they part, 

Courteous and loving. 

Oliver, feeling that his death is near, 
Dismounts, and lying low upon the ground, 
Confesses all his sins, and lifts joined hands, 
Imploring God to grant him paradise, 
To bless sweet France, and Charles the Emperor, 
And Roland above all men. Then he dies. 

The noble Roland, when he sees his friend 
Lying face downward, prone along the ground, 
Cannot forbear from sighing and from tears. 
Full low he speaks, and thus bewails himself : 
" Companion, to thy cost thou wert so bold. 
We have been comrades many years and days. 
Thou never didst me harm, nor harmed I thee. 
Since thou art dead, I sorrow that I live." 
And saying this, the Marquis faints away 
Upon his horse, well known as Veillantif. 
His golden spurs are fastened to his heels 
He cannot fall. 

A whirlwind sweeps over the land of France, 
Terrific tempests and great thunder-gusts, 
And hail and rain in torrents. It is said, 
And said with truth, there was an earthquake felt 



54 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

From Mount St. Michael to the holy shrine 

In far Cologne. As well from Besancon 

To western port of Wishant. Not a house 

But shook to its foundations, and at noon 

Darkness profound. Save where the lightning came, 

Cleaving the sky, there was no light at all. 

All who beheld these portents quaked with fear, 

And many said, " It is the Judgment-day ; 

It is the end of the world." They little knew 

Twas the great mourning for the death of Roland. 

When Roland comes to himself, he sees the extent of 
the disaster. Only two of his knights are left, Gautier 
of Hum, and the Archbishop, both mortally wounded, the 
Archbishop in four places. Roland has dragged him out 
of the conflict, and has driven off the Saracens for the 
time. He lays the prelate gently upon the grass, binds 
up his wounds, and begs of him one last service — to 
bless the dead as he had blessed the living. 

Roland departs. He searches all the field 
He searches lofty crags and valleys deep ; 
He finds Ivon and Ivory, Gerin, 
Gerier, his friend the Gascon Engelers ; 
He finds Gerart, the old of Roussillon, 
Berenger, Othon, Samson, and Anselm. 
He brings them one by one, and lays them down, 
At Turpin's feet he lays them in a row. 
The good Archbishop cannot choose but weep. 
He lifts his hand, and blesses them from God. 
" Fair sirs," said he, " you came in evil hour. 
May God, all-glorious, rest your souls in peace 
In holy flowers in heaven ! Alas for me ! 
The pains of death encompass me about 
I never more shall see the Emperor." 

Roland looks for Oliver's body, and brings it, held close 
to his heart, to receive also the Archbishop's benedic- 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 55 

tion ; and after bewailing his loss and reciting his friend's 

virtues, he faints away again. The Archbishop tries to 

restore him, but dies in the attempt. At last Roland 
comes to himself alone. 

When Roland sees the Archbishop is dead, 
He crosses on his breast his fair white hands, 
And then aloud, the fashion of his land, 
He makes his orison : "Ah, gentlemen, 
Most noble knight, I leave you to the care 
Of the All-glorious One who dwells above. 
You served your master gladly. Never man 
Since the apostles was a greater prophet 
To keep the faith and draw men after him. 
God grant your soul, set free, 
Through open doors may pass to paradise ! " 

Then Roland feels that his own death is near. 
His brains ooze through his ears. He says his prayers, 
First for his friends to God, to Gabriel, 
Commends his soul, then takes the olifant 
In one hand, in the other Durandal. 
Thus all equipped, he goes a bow-shot's length, 
Far as an arbalete can send a stone, 
On Spanish soil. He climbs a little hill 
In a wide field. There, under two fine trees, 
Lie four great blocks of marble. Roland falls 
Back on the greensward, and then faints away. 
Death is at hand. Aoi I 



A Saracen is lying on the ground not far off, who has 
covered his face with blood, feigning death. He leaps to 
his feet, and cries exultingly : " He is conquered, Charle- 
magne's great nephew ! I shall take his sword back with 
me to Arabia." He seizes Durandal, and pulls Roland's 
beard. At this indignity the hero comes to himself, and 
dashes the Saracen's brains out with his olifant. He 



56 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

then tries to break Durandal to pieces against the stones, 
but in vain. Thus he mourns over his sword : 

" O my good Durandal ! how fair and bright 
Thou flamest in the sunshine ! Charlemagne 
In the Savoyard valleys heard from heaven 
(An angel told him) that it was a gift 
For a great Captain. Then the noble King 
Girded it at my side. . . . 

Have I not conquered towns and lands enough 
That own the sway of Charles with the white beard? 
And now my grief is great for this good sword. 
I cannot leave it for these pagan folk. 
Lord God our Father, bring not France to shame! " 
Now Roland feels the death-chill at his heart. 
He runs and throws himself beneath a pine, 
Face downward on the greensward. Under him 
He puts his good sword and his olifant, 
And turns his face toward the heathen host. 
Why does he thus ? That Charles and all the French 
May see he died a conqueror. Aoi ! 

He lies upon the hill o'erlooking Spain, 
And beats his breast with one hand, and he cries: 
" Lord, I have greatly sinned in Thy pure sight. 
Mercy for all the great and little sins, 
All I have done since I was born till now ! " 
Holds out the glove of his right hand to God. 
Angels from heaven descend and hover near. 

The French arrive, and find the ground strewed with 
the bodies of their friends and foes. 

The Emperor, in searching far and wide, 
At last espied a meadow where the grass 
And flowers were blood-stained. As he rode, 
For pity the great King shed bitter tears. 
And when he reached the height beneath the trees, 
And knew the strokes of Roland on the stones, 
And saw his nephew lying on the grass, 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 

It is no marvel that his grief was great. 
He left his horse, and ran to where he lay, 
Lifted him up, and then, in dire distress, 
Fainted away. 

The Emperor recovers from his swoon ; 
Four of his barons hold him by the hand. 
But he looks down and sees where Roland lies, 
His eyes upturned and full of darkness, pale, 
So ghastly pale, but still a gallant man. 
And thus he mourns him in great faith and love : 
" Friend Roland, may God rest thy soul in flowers 
Among the blessed saints in paradise ! 
Ill did betide thee when thou cam'st to Spain. 
Each day I live shall be new grief for me; 
My power, my joy, my pride, all gone with thee ! 
Who will sustain me in my kingdom ? None. 
Where are my friends ? The only one is dead. 
My kin ? There is not one of them like him." 
Great handfuls of his hair the King tears out. 
A hundred thousand Frenchmen stand around, 
And every one lets fall some scalding tears. 

" Friend Roland, I shall hie me back to France, 
And when I come to my good town of Laon, 
Strangers shall journey there from many realms 
And ask me of my famous captain. Then 
I shall make answer: • He has died in Spain.' 
In sorrow I shall reign, and every day 
Shall groan and weep for thee, Roland, my friend. 

" Friend Roland, valiant man and beauteous youth, 
When I betake me to Aix-la-Chapelle, 
And men shall come to ask for news of thee, 
All I can say is cruel. He is dead, 
My nephew whom I loved, my conqueror! 
And now the Saxons will rebel again, 
And many other peoples, Africans, 
Sicilians, those of Hungary, La Pouille, 
And far Bulgaria. Where is the Count? 
Who now can lead my armies ? He is dead 
Who led to victory. Each day I live 



57 



58 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

I suffer more. O my sweet land of France, 
Behold you orphaned ! Bitter is my grief. 

I do not care to live." Then with both hands 

He tears his beard and hair. The Frenchmen fall, 
A hundred thousand fainting to the ground. 

Charlemagne chases the Saracens across the Ebro, de- 
feats them with great slaughter, and takes Saragossa, 
where a hundred thousand heathen prefer Christian bap- 
tism to a violent death. Marsile dies of wounds received 
in battle, his son is killed, and his wife Braminonde is 
taken prisoner. Roland thus avenged, the Emperor 
returns to Aix la-Chapelle, where he is met in the hall of 
his palace by the beautiful Alda, or Aude, Oliver's sister, 
and the betrothed of Roland. 

Charles, the great King, has just arrived from Spain; 
Journeys to Aix, that famous town of France ; 
Goes to his palace ; in the entrance-hall 
Is met by Alda, and the ladye fair 
Asks: " Where is Roland, the great captain ? where 
Is he who swore to take me for his wife?" 
The Emperor, bowed down with heavy grief, 
Bursts into tears, and tears his snowy beard. 
" Sister, dear friend, you ask for a dead man. 
All I can do is this : In Roland's place 
Take Louis for your husband, Louis my son, 
Who keeps the Marches. More I cannot do." 

II These are strange words, my liege," Alda replies. 
" May God and all His saints and angels grant 
That, Roland dead, I may no longer live ! " 
Deadly her pallor, at the Emperor's feet 
Lifeless she falls. Alda the fair is dead. 

May God in heaven have mercy on her soul ! 
For pity the French barons wondering weep. 

The lovely Alda to her rest has gone, 
But Charles believes that she has only swooned. 
He weeps for pity as he looks at her, 



THE SONG OF ROLAND $9 

Then lifts her up and takes her by the hand. 
The fair head droops, and now the Emperor 
Knows that she is dead. Four noble ladies come 
(So the King orders), and they bear her forth 
Hard by unto a convent. There they watch 
Beside the maiden till the morning breaks. 
Then she is buried in great pomp and state 
Close to the altar : such the King's command. 

Excepting Braminonde, wife of Marsile, Alda is the only- 
woman mentioned in the " Song of Roland," and the 
little glimpse of her is a touching one. The position of 
both is noticeable. The word used for wife by Alda, 
when she says, " Roland, who swore to take me for his 
wife," is per, translated femme in the modern French ver- 
sions, not unlike our word peer. Braminonde is quite the 
type of a Southern heroine, ardent and active, devoted to 
her own people. She helps bribe Ganelon with magnifi- 
cent bracelets of her own, which the traitor hides in his 
boot or hose. She urges the Saracens to fight instead of 
fleeing before the vengeful Charlemagne, and seems to 
mourn her husband's defeat even more than his death. In 
the end she becomes a Christian of her own free-will 
while a prisoner in France. 

The trial of Ganelon at Aix is a very interesting piece 
of legal procedure according to the Teutonic forms of the 
time. First, arrest and corporeal punishment before the 
" placitum palatii," the trial proper, presided over by 
the King, who, however, has no voice in the assembly. 
The process ends with an appeal to the judgment of God 
in the ordeal by battle, or deadly combat. Ganelon's 
champion falls, and he himself is therefore condemned to 
die the death of a traitor, torn asunder by four wild 
horses. His thirty sureties are all hung at the same 



60 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

time. This traitor baron is no villain of the ordinary 
stamp, but a bold, brave man meant for better things, who 
falls a prey at last to his fierce envy and vindictive, jealous 
hatred of Roland, his son-in-law. 

The Emperor is weary and worn with grief, though 
Ganelon's sentence and Braminonde's conversion have 
comforted him a little. Finally he has a vision, command- 
ing him to go to the help of distressed Christians in a 
place that bears the mysterious name of " Implies." The 
Crusades are impending. 

Thus ends the " Song of Roland," honest in its rever- 
ence, pure though rough in its expression (there is not a 
single coarse word in it from beginning to end) ; a Chris- 
tian poem, the story of a signal defeat that becomes an 
inspiration for a great triumph. It is eminently serious 
in its tone, the only comic part being that where Ganelon 
is chained up like a tame bear, and given over to the 
King's scullions to be beaten with rods. This gayety has 
been truly said to savor more of camps than courts. 
There is a supernatural flavor throughout : Charlemagne 
is warned in dreams ; he bids the sun stand still like 
Joshua, and is obeyed : angels stoop over the dying Roland 
and help the Emperor to avenge his loss. 

Roland dies as a hero and a martyr ; but greater than 
his affection for the Church is his love of France. 
Dreading lest Durandal should fall into pagan hands after 
his death, he prays, " O Lord God our Father, let not 
France be brought to shame." We can but wonder with 
a recent French writer that his countrymen for full three 
hundred years allowed such a poem as this to be ignored 
and forgotten, — one that embodies the national life of the 
time, preserving, moreover, types that no one can fail to 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 6l 

recognize to-day. For is not the undisciplined, rash, 
haughty courage of Roland still dear to the heart of the 
French nation ? Does not his passion for " France, sweet 
France, France the free," yet find an echo there ? 

As Heine's grenadier grieves over the "forsaken empe- 
ror" more than for wife and child, so it is Oliver and not 
Roland who speaks of Alda in the conflict. The hero's 
last prayer is for France, and not for his ladye. 

Many people, says Ludlow (we quote the substance of 
his remarks) who admire French prose, but condemn 
French literature as unpoetical, do not know that in the 
tenth and eleventh centuries, far behind Froissart, there 
lies in the French language a group of poems unsurpassed 
as a whole in European literature. Of these the oldest, 
the most complete, and the most beautiful is the " Song 
of Roland." 

It is founded on historic fact, overlaid with fiction, and 
illuminated with legend. There were really two or three 
disasters at Roncesvaux ; the first in the days of Dago- 
bert, and another, related by Eginhard in the ninth chap- 
ter of his Life of Charlemagne. In a recently discovered 
MS. of the National Library in Paris we read as follows : 

"On the 15th of August, 778, Charlemagne, retiring from Spain, where 
his campaign had been only partially successful, gave the command of his 
rear-guard to Roland, his nephew, to protect his march through the Pyrenean 
passes. Close to the place where the chapel of Ibagneta now stands, in the 
pass of Roncesvaux, the rear-guard was attacked and cut to pieces by the 
Gascon mountaineers, Roland himself being killed." 

Michel, in his edition of the " Song of Roland," gives 
this " Song of Alta-bicar " as a commemoration of the 
event in popular Basque poetry. Whether authentic or 
not, it is remarkable for its rude vigor. 



62 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

" A cry has arisen from the midst of the mountains of the Escualdanac, 
and the master of the house, standing before his door, has opened his ears, 
and said, ' Who goes there ? What will they with me ? ' And the dog that 
slept at his master's feet has roused itself, and has filled the neighborhood 
of Alta-bicar with its barkings. 

" In the pass of Ibagneta a noise resounds ; it nears, touching the rocks 
to right, to left ; it is the dull murmur of a coming army. Our men have 
replied to it from the mountain-tops ; they have blown in their ox-horns, and 
the master of the house sharpens his arrows. 

" They come ! they come ! What a hedge of spears ! How the rainbow- 
hued banners float in the midst ! What lightning flashes from their weapons ! 
How many are there ? Child, reckon them well. ' One, two, three, four, five, 
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, 
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.' 

" Twenty, and thousands more besides 1 One should lose time in reckon- 
ing them. Let us unite our sinewy arms ; let us uproot these rocks ; let us 
fling them from the mountain-tops upon their very heads ! Crush them ! 
kill them ! 

" And what had they to do in our mountains, these men of the North ? 
Why are they come to disturb our peace ? When God makes mountains, it 
is that men may not cross them. But the rocks fall rolling, they overwhelm 
the troops ; blood streams, flesh quivers. Oh, how many crushed bones ! 
What a sea of blood ! 

" Flee, flee, all to whom strength remains and a horse. Flee, King Karlo- 
man, with thy black plumes and thy red mantle. Thy nephew, thy bravest, 
thy darling Roland, is stretched dead yonder. His courage was of no avail. 
And now, Escualdanac, let us leave the rocks there, let us quickly descend, 
flinging our arrows at the fugitives. 

"They flee, they flee. Where now is the hedge of spears? — where the 
rainbow-hued banners floating in their midst ? Lightnings flash no more 
from their blood-soiled weapons. How many are there ? Child, reckon 
them well. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, 
thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one ? 

" One ! There is not even one. It is done. Master of the house, you 
may go in with your dogs, kiss wife and children, clean your arrows, put 
them away with your ox-horn, then lie down over them to sleep. By night 
the eagles shall come and eat the crushed flesh, and the bones shall whiten 
in eternity." 

The popularity of the legend would seem to show that 
the defeat was a more important one than the brief his- 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 63 

torical mention would indicate. The " Song of Roland " 
itself is founded on these words of Eginhard : " In this 
disaster perished Hruolandus, prefect of the marches of 
Brittany." 

This poem is written in lines of ten syllables, the heroic 
pentameter, with the break after the fourth syllable. It 
is divided into " laisses," or stanzas of twelve or fifteen 
lines in almost every instance, all the lines of each stanza 
ending with the same vowel sound. And this assocance, 
as it is called, is not meant for the eye, but for the ear. 
It should be borne in mind that the poem was meant to 
be sung or recited. 

Almost all the stanzas end with a mysterious, untrans- 
latable word — aoi. At one time it was thought to be a 
war-cry, and this accorded with the Taillefer story ; but 
then it was said to be an old musical notation ; and there 
was another theory that it is a sort of wailing refrain, like 
the ahe, or ay> at the end of many old lyrics in all the 
Romance languages. 

The mourning for Roland has been thought to remind 
one of the passage in the Georgics describing the omens 
of Caesar's death. The enumeration of the French antl 
Saracen nobles, and of the different peoples that composed 
the heathen host, is Homeric, as well as the constantly 
recurring epithets, and the vast amount of single combats 
that make up the battles ; but our trouvere, probably a 
Norman of the eleventh century, most likely knew noth- 
ing of Homer or Virgil. 

Roland is a cosmopolite. A valuable MS. copy of the 
poem is extant in Venice, and our hero has stood in stone 
with his friend and companion in arms, Oliver, at the door- 
way of the cathedral in Verona for seven hundred years. 



64 THE SONG OF ROLAND 

Pulci, Aretino, and Ariosto have all sung of his renown. 
Our Shakespeare knew the two friends, and has handed 
down to us "a Roland for an Oliver." There is an Eng- 
lish version of the poem, dating from the thirteenth 
century. Germany has her " Ruolandusliet " and the 
Icelandic peasant of Reikiavik can recount the deeds of 
Roland. In Denmark and the Netherlands the story is 
popular, and the Spanish version most in vogue relates that 
the nephew of the great Emperor was defeated by Ber- 
nardo del Carpio. According to Gautier, while all nations 
of Europe have been delighted to copy or translate this 
Iliad, literary France in the sixteenth century became so 
absorbed in yEneas that she forgot Roland, and this ingrat- 
itude has lasted three hundred years. In 1836, however, 
M. Francisque Michel installed himself in the Bodleian 
Library and brought out the first French edition from that 
famous Oxford MS. Since then there has been a revival 
of interest in old French, and our poem bids fair to be 
again popular in the land of its birth. We cannot feel 
as we lay it down that the " great century " of Louis the 
Fourteenth, or the Second Empire either, is all there is of 
French literature. 



BEAUMARCHAIS 



At a brilliant ///<? given by the city of Paris to the first 
Napoleon, the emperor suddenly paused, in his progress 
through the gay crowd, in front of a pretty woman with 
an animated, eager face, and asked her name. Her 
answer was simply this : " I am the daughter of Beaumar- 
chais." Have we any idea of the just pride with which 
those words were uttered, or can we feel how much they 
meant to him who heard them ? It may answer for the 
world at large to remember only that Beaumarchais was 
the author of the " Barber of Seville," and the witty de- 
fendant in some famous lawsuits ; but students of our 
early history are aware of his claims to the grateful remem- 
brance of American citizens, ignored and controverted 
though those claims have been. 

The only boy in a family of six children, Pierre 
Augustin Caron, better known as Beaumarchais, was born 
in Paris in 1732, the year of Washington's birth. Un- 
dreamed of then, it is rarely recalled now, that the one 
was to supplement the other ; that the opportune, sorely 
needed succor sent by Beaumarchais from France for our 
brave men at Valley Forge cheered the sinking heart of 
the great general in that darkest hour before dawn. 
Beaumarchais died convinced that we were utterly un- 

65 



66 BEAUMARCHAIS 

grateful. Is it true, and if true can we afford to remain 
so ? 

That was a humble home in the Rue St. Denis, where 
the watchmaker, his father, dwelt ; but hardly in our own 
favored land could one be found more affectionate, more 
cultivated, or more refined in its atmosphere. There were 
five sisters to pet and admire the only brother among them, 
and at fifteen Pierre would seem to have been a lively, 
spoiled child, devoted to music, in which he excelled, and 
fond of playing pranks and writing verses instead of 
working steadily at his father's trade, to which he was 
apprenticed. Music, indeed, must have been a family 
gift. All the children played on one or more instruments, 
and composed accompaniments to the little songs which 
they wrote on various festive occasions ; for there was 
evidently a great deal of fun and fondness, as well as 
accomplishment and cultivation, in this watchmaker's 
home. One sister, Julia, understood Italian and Spanish 
well, and enjoyed the writings of Young and Richardson. 
Her letters are very graceful and lively, and she became 
in later life an author. Like her brother, however, her 
character is more remarkable than her writings. 

The father was of good Huguenot stock, but had signed 
his public recantation before Pierre was born. It must be 
remembered that he could not otherwise have established 
himself in business in Paris, such was the prevalent intol- 
erance even in those days of indifference and scepticism. 
When his son was hardly eighteen, his father turned him 
out of doors for idleness and dissipation ; keeping an eye 
upon him all the time, however, and conspiring with some 
friends who went to the rescue of the boy. The follow- 
ing letter, in which the father consents to the return of 



BEAUMARCHAIS 6j 

the contrite prodigal, throws some light on the relation 
between parents and children in those days : — 

"Your great misfortune consists in my having lost all confidence in you. 
Nevertheless, the esteem and friendship which I feel for the excellent people 
who have befriended you, and the gratitude I owe them for their kindness, 
induce me to consent to your return, persuaded though I am that there is 
hardly any chance that you will keep your word. These are my conditions : 
(i) That you shall make, sell, or cause to be made or sold, absolutely noth- 
ing, except for me alone. You shall not sell even an old watch-key without 
rendering an account of it to me. (2) You must get up in summer at six, 
and in winter at seven. You must work cheerfully till supper-time at any- 
thing I give you to do. I mean that you shall employ the ability God has 
given you to become famous in your profession. Remember that it is 
shameful and disgraceful not to excel, and that if you do not become emi- 
nent you forfeit my respect ; for the love of such a noble art should pene- 
trate your heart, and fill your mind to the exclusion of all other interests. 
(3) You must not go out any more to supper, or stay away from home of an 
evening; but you may dine with your friends on Sundays and holidays, on 
condition, however, that I know where you go, and that you always come 
back before nine o'clock. (4) You must give up entirely your miserable 
music, and, above all, the society of other young men. Both these things 
have brought you to ruin. Nevertheless, through regard to your weakness, 
I allow you to play on the flute and violin ; but only on the express condi- 
tion that it shall be in the evening on week-days, and at such times and 
places, moreover, as shall not interfere with our neighbors' rest, or my own 
either." 

The boy promised to obey, and faithfully kept his word. 
From this time he never seems to have forfeited his 
father's esteem or affection ; on the contrary, he became 
the pride and joy of his life. Two years after, he invented 
a tiny escapement for watches, but was robbed of all 
honor and profit for the time being by the dishonesty of 
a well-known watchmaker of the city, in whom he had 
with pride confided, and who appropriated the invention. 
The lad prosecuted him, however, and finally triumphed. 
The suit had attracted attention, and soon after he was 



68 BEAUMARCHAIS 

appointed watchmaker to the king. Then he made a 
watch with the new escapement as a present for Madame 
Pompadour, who wore it in a ring on her finger. Such 
watches became the fashion, and orders flowed in from 
all the courtiers and those who mimicked their ways. 
Among these customers came a lady whose husband, con- 
siderably older than herself, held a place in the king's 
household. Enchanted with the young man's appearance 
and manner, she cultivated his acquaintance, put him in 
the way of buying her husband's place at court, when he 
gave it up soon afterwards, and, on the old man's death, 
married the handsome young watchmaker. From a small 
estate in her possession he now assumed the name of 
Beaumarchais, which he shared at once with his favorite 
sister, Julia. He became also, about this time, secretary 
to his majesty, — rather a sinecure, one would think, in 
this part of the reign of Louis XV., — and soon made 
himself indispensable to the princesses, those four royal 
ladies whose pious, retired life in the centre of the gay, 
licentious court of their father, presented such a striking 
contrast to their surroundings. Beaumarchais taught 
them to play on everything, from a trombone to a jew's- 
harp ; procured them all the instruments they wanted ; 
organized and presided at the weekly entertainments they 
gave their father — concerts attended by the queen, the 
dauphin, and all the best part of the court. The thought- 
lessness of the princesses in money matters, or their inabil- 
ity to pay for the instruments he bought for their use, was 
an endless source of embarrassment to their protege, whose 
means were far from unlimited. However, he was making 
his way. The dauphin liked the young man, and said 
once, " Beaumarchais is the only person who speaks the 



BEAUMARCHAIS 69 

truth to me." After his untimely death, no doubt, this 
partiality was an additional passport to his sisters' favor. 

The story of the watch has been often told, but may 
bear repetition. One day a young noble stopped Beau- 
marchais, as, all arrayed in his court suit, he was passing 
through the palace corridor, on his way to give a lesson 
to his royal pupils, and asked him, with mock gravity, to 
examine his watch, and see what was the matter with it. 
A group of youthful aristocrats at once drew near to 
enjoy the sport. " I should not advise you to trust it in 
my hands," said the young aspirant. " I have grown very 
awkward." His tormentor insisting, with profuse com- 
pliments, much to the amusement of his friends, Beau- 
marchais lifted the watch up to the light, as if to look 
closely at it, and then dropped it deliberately on the ground, 
so that it was crushed by the fall. Turning on his heel, 
saying, " I told you I had grown very awkward," he left 
the disconcerted courtier to pick up the pieces himself. 
Then he fought a duel, and killed another young noble- 
man who had insulted him, but was too generous to reveal 
the name of his adversary before he died of his wounds. 

He now persuaded his father, perhaps on account of all 
this trouble, to close his shop, and take up his abode with 
him. The old man did so reluctantly, but never seems to 
have repented of his acquiescence. 

Through his influence with the king's daughters, he in- 
gratiated himself with an old speculator and financier, 
Paris Duverny, who had helped Voltaire to make his for- 
tune, and was ready to do the same for young Beaumar- 
chais. They entered into partnership, made extensive 
business arrangements, and set on foot many projects, 
almost always with a view to public benefit as well as 
private profit. 



yO BEAUMARCHAIS 

Meantime, two of Beaumarchais' sisters had gone to 
Madrid, where one married an architect, and the younger 
became affianced to a literary man in favor at the Spanish 
court. Twice, when the wedding-day had been fixed and 
all preparations completed, the bridegroom had not been 
forthcoming, and the second time he failed to appear the 
young girl was made alarmingly ill by distress and morti- 
fication. Learning this, her brother first assured himself 
that she was in no wise to blame, and then departed post 
haste for Madrid, sought an interview with the faithless 
lover, and, on his refusing satisfaction, left no stone un- 
turned till he had procured his public disgrace and sum- 
mary dismissal. Goethe has made this story the subject 
of a play entitled "Clavigo," in which he introduces Beau- 
marchais as "the avenger." Our hero remained a year in 
Madrid, where he made many friends, came into high 
favor at court, and contracted an intimacy with Lord 
Rochford, the English ambassador. Here again his "mis- 
erable music " made the bond of sympathy and contributed 
to his advancement. 

He proposed at this time to colonize the Sierra Morena, 
to take the place of commissary-general of the king's 
army, and also, I regret to say, obtained a monopoly for 
supplying the Spanish West India Islands with negroes 
direct from Africa. This project, however, seems ulti- 
mately to have been abandoned. His next step was to 
purchase a new place at court, that of lieutenant gfoie'ral 
des chasses, or superintendent of the king's hunting 
grounds. This office involved the exercise of judicial 
functions, and now we find him invested with robes of 
state, holding court every week at the Palais de Justice. 

He had lost his wife about a year after their marriage, 



BEAUMARCHAIS 7 1 

and on his return from Spain there had been a projected 
union with a certain fair West Indian ward, in whom he was 
greatly interested, and who had become an inmate of his 
family. But this affair never culminated, and Beaumar- 
chais soon married another widow, beautiful, brilliant, and 
very rich. She died in three years, and their little son did 
not long survive her. 

At this time he first appeared in the character of a 
dramatic author. His two plays, " Eugene " and " Les 
Deux Amis," met with no great success, and added noth- 
ing to his reputation ; they were of the sentimental, seri- 
ous character then in vogue, and are now forgotten. The 
most conspicuous part he then played was that of a wood 
merchant. In partnership with M. Paris-Duverny he had 
bought the great forest of Chinon, and they were engaged 
in this business on a large scale, when M. Duverny died, 
and their accounts remained unsettled. Unfortunately, a 
nephew of the old financier, the Comte de la Blache, an 
avowed enemy of Beaumarchais, was appointed executor 
and residuary legatee. All Beaumarchais' claims against 
the estate were contested, litigation ensued, and when the 
first decision was rendered against him, the count appealed 
to a higher court, in which a commoner would necessarily 
contend at great disadvantage with a member of the aris- 
tocracy. The refusal to accept Beaumarchais' statements 
involved an accusation of forgery, and while this impor- 
tant suit remained undecided a great scandal occurred. 
A brutal, stalwart nobleman, the Due de Chaulnes, had 
become jealous of the favor shown Beaumarchais by a 
young actress whom the duke had taken under his protec- 
tion. She appears to have been frightened by the noble- 
man's violence, and he attributed her changed manner to 



72 BEAUMARCHAIS 

the successful rivalship of our hero, challenged him to 
fight a duel, and, while they were waiting for their seconds, 
made an assault upon him in his own house, literally with 
tooth and nail. The police was obliged to interfere, and 
both parties were arrested. The duke was sent to Vin- 
cennes, and Beaumarchais to a less distinguished place of 
confinement, where he remained a long time, to the great 
detriment of his lawsuit. 

The stanch old Parliament of Paris had been exiled, 
and was now replaced by the servile assembly called, from 
its creator, the Maupeou Parliament. It shows the frivo- 
lous mood of those days, that when one of the members 
of this assembly complained to Maurepas that they could 
not show themselves in the streets without being insulted 
by the populace, the minister replied, "Wear dominos, 
then, and they will not know you." To a member of this 
discredited and most discreditable body was referred the 
suit brought by the Comte de la Blache against Beaumar- 
chais. It was a serious matter, affecting his character no 
less than his property. Beaumarchais received permission 
to leave his place of confinement, attended by a jailer, in 
order to solicit his judges, as was customary. But he 
failed in his repeated attempts to see the counsellor Goez- 
man, whom he had reason to believe prejudiced against 
him by persistent endeavors, made by friends of La Blache 
and the Duke de Chaulnes, to blacken his character. They 
had published and widely disseminated most atrocious 
libels and unfounded accusations against him ; among 
others, that of poisoning his two wives. In this dilemma, 
unable to obtain an audience, it was suggested that a hand- 
some present made to Madame Goezman, wife of the coun- 
sellor, might gain him admission to the husband's presence. 



BEAUMARCHAIS 73 

The experiment was tried, and it succeeded, though the 
interview was unsatisfactory, and the decision, when ren- 
dered, proved to be adverse. It had been agreed that if 
the suit were decided against him the lady should return 
the money given her ; and she did so, all but a small sum, 
fifteen louis, said to be retained as a compensation to the 
great man's secretary. Beaumarchais discovered that this 
individual had never received the money, and he immedi- 
ately wrote to Madame Goezman, indignantly demanding 
restitution. Probably having spent the money, she com- 
plained to her husband ; and he, possibly misinformed in 
regard to the details of the affair, prosecuted Beaumarchais 
at once for false accusation and endeavor to corrupt a 
magistrate in the exercise of his judicial functions. Pub- 
licity in legal affairs was then unknown in France, such 
cases always being tried with closed doors, and Beaumar- 
chais knew that Goezman could thus bid him defiance with 
perfect impunity in the Maupeou Parliament. In this ex- 
tremity, on the brink of financial ruin, his property at- 
tached for the debt to the Duverny estate, his hands tied, 
and his character defamed by libels industriously circu- 
lated, he had the genius to perceive that his only salvation 
lay in dealing a deadly blow at the infamous power, the 
assembly, which had pronounced one verdict against him, 
and most likely would hasten to confirm it by another. 
There was a great risk to be run ; for the king himself 
would be indirectly assaulted in the persons of these 
members, his subservient tools ; but what else could be 
done ? No one could be found to undertake his case, so he 
became his own advocate, and proved a most able one. 
In polite European society, for the next seven months, his 
brilliant defence of himself and his scathing assaults of 



74 BEAUMARCHAIS 

his enemies were the staple topics of conversation and 
an unfailing source of amusement. 

Voltaire, Horace Walpole, and Goethe have all recorded 
their delight in these Memorials. The gay young dau- 
phiness, Marie Antoinette, enjoyed them extremely, and 
named the bunch of plumes that crowned her head-dress 
from a jest in one of his dramatic reports of the proceed- 
ings. These witty appeals to public opinion, in which he 
knew " how to merge his private grievances in the public 
wrongs," and to hold up for merciless ridicule a deservedly 
despised tribunal, introduced publicity in legal affairs, and 
made certain the downfall of the hated Parliament. It 
was not, however, legally abolished till 1774. A wit of 
the day said, " It took Louis Quinze to establish, and 
quinze louis to overthrow, the Maupeou Parliament." At 
the end of a seven-months' contest with a private individ- 
ual, this notorious body signed its own death-warrant by 
condemning both Beaumarchais and the counsellor Goez- 
man to " public censure." They were declared to have 
forfeited their civil rights, and the famous Memorials were 
ordered to be burned by the public executioner. When 
the verdict was made known it became the signal for a 
perfect ovation. All people of distinction in Paris flocked 
to the house of Beaumarchais, and vied in doing him 
honor. Led by the Prince de Conti, the world of fashion 
waited on the condemned criminal, and he was entitled 
"the first citizen of France," from a well-known passage 
in his Memorials, in which he says, "I am a citizen, and 
I mean by that neither a courtier, an abbe, a man of rank, 
a financier, or a favorite. I am a citizen ; that is to say, 
what you should have been for the last two hundred 
years, — what you may be, perhaps, in twenty years to 
come." 



BEAUMARCHAIS 75 

One statesman at this time laughingly warned him 
that it was not enough to have been sentenced by the 
Maupeou Parliament ; he must try and bear his honors 
meekly. 

The keen satire, fun, and graphic descriptions of these 
Memorials have secured for them a permanent place in 
French literature. All the scenes in which he introduces 
Madame Goezman are particularly comic. She was a 
frivolous, pretty woman, whose head was turned by a 
compliment, and who became hopelessly bewildered in her 
statements. She shows in her conduct a remarkable 
mixture of craft, innocence, and impudence. " The poor 
woman," confronted with Beaumarchais, is made to say 
black is white ; he alternately soothes and enrages her. 
When he drives her distracted, she threatens to box his 
ears ; when he pays her a compliment, and says that he 
should take her to be eighteen instead of thirty, she 
smiles in spite of herself, does not think him quite so 
impertinent, and even asks him to escort her to her car- 
riage. It is the gayest, most delicious irony. As he says 
to himself, " Cry as much as you may, you cannot help 
laughing. Je suis un peu comme la cousine d'Heloi'se, 
j'ai beau pleurer, il faut toujours que le rire s'echappe par 
quelque coin." Some passages of a different sort have 
become classic ; for instance, the one ending with this 
prayer: " Being of Beings, I owe thee all: the joy of 
living, of thinking and feeling. I believe that thou hast 
ordered good and evil for us in equal measure. I believe 
that thy justice wisely compensates us for all, and that 
the succession of pain and pleasure, of fear and hope, is 
the fresh wind which fills the vessel's sails, and sends her 
gayly on her way." 



?6 BEAUMARCHAIS 

Though a popular idol, he was yet legally disfranchised, 
and Beaumarchais was not a man to resign himself to his 
fate except for the time being, — " provisoirement" as he 
says. He had just married, too, for the third time. His 
wife was a most estimable and attractive woman, who was 
full of enthusiasm for the hero of the Goezman suit, and 
he was unwearied in his endeavors to procure his restora- 
tion to civil rights by ingratiating himself with Louis 
XV. He undertook, among other things, a delicate diplo- 
matic mission, and induced an unscrupulous scoundrel, 
who had taken refuge in England, to forego the publica- 
tion of some scandalous memoirs of Madame Du Barry. 
This was accomplished " for a consideration;" but when 
Beaumarchais returned to claim his reward, Louis XV. 
was on his death-bed, and his labor had been all in vain. 
Nothing daunted, however, he undertook to manage the 
mysterious Chevalier d'Eon for the new king, gained his 
point, and then offered to obtain the suppression of a 
pamphlet, offensive to Marie Antoinette, which was in the 
possession of a certain Jew named Angelucci. His re- 
markable adventures with Jews and bandits, his kind recep- 
tion by Maria Theresa, and his subsequent incarceration 
in Austria are amusingly related by Lomenie. While in 
England, employed in these delicate diplomatic missions, 
he had renewed his intimacy with his Madrid friend, Lord 
Rochford, now a cabinet minister, and he had become 
also a frequent visitor at the house of John Wilkes. 
There he met many of the friends of America, and subse- 
quently made the acquaintance of the man who was 
destined to do him so much harm, Arthur Lee. France 
was at this time in a state of great exasperation against 
England, and Beaumarchais tried with all his might for 



BEAUMARCHAIS 77 

two years to convince Louis XVI. of what he fully be- 
lieved himself, — that civil war was imminent across the 
Channel, that the attempt to coerce America was extremely 
unpopular, and that aiding the insurgents would insure 
the final destruction of the dreaded hereditary enemy of 
France. To injure England, and thus aggrandize his own 
country, was apparently his object at first ; but as he 
learned more of our struggle for liberty, he evidently 
became deeply interested in the issue. 

In 1776, Congress sent Silas Deane to Paris to solicit 
aid for our dauntless army. Before any answer could 
arrive from him, the secret committee of Congress re- 
ceived a communication from Arthur Lee, in London, 
stating that the French ambassador at the court of St. 
James had been won over to the American cause by his 
strenuous efforts and powerful persuasion, and, at his 
solicitation, had induced his government to send a secret 
agent to him, Arthur Lee, offering as a gratuity a million 
livres. This present, however, he added, was to be made 
under cover of a commercial transaction of some kind, 
for fear of alarming England, with whom France was then 
at peace. 

The truth was that the French ambassador in London 
knew nothing at all of the matter, and that Beaumarchais, 
striving to interest Louis XVI. and his ministers in what 
he had learned to regard as a great and glorious cause, 
had merely called on Arthur Lee, and imparted to him 
his own scheme for conveying assistance to the colonies. 
Indeed, in urgent letters to M. Vergennes on this subject, 
of a subsequent date, he alludes to Mr. Lee as an Ameri- 
can who will go to Paris, and confer with the ministers, if 
they eventually consent to help America. 



78 BEAUMARCHAIS 

The enthusiastic advocacy and persistent energy of 
Beaumarchais at last produced an effect. The king agreed 
to aid the " insurgents," but on the express condition that 
the commercial transaction should be bona fide. Beau- 
marchais on his part agreed to establish in Paris a mercan- 
tile house, under the assumed name of Rodrigue Hortalez 
& Co., for the purpose of procuring and sending to 
America all sorts of military supplies, to be paid for, on 
long credit, by returns of American products. This plan 
entirely superseded the first idea of gratuitous help, and 
met with especial favor, as it seemed to obviate the danger 
of war with England. 

When, therefore, Silas Deane made his application for 
aid, it was refused ; but at the same time he was given to 
understand that he could doubtless make advantageous 
arrangements with the house of Hortalez & Co. It had 
been settled that arms, ammunition, and all sorts of 
military stores could be taken from the royal arsenals, — 
to be returned, however; and also that his majesty should 
stand between the colonists and their creditor, to see that 
they were not pressed for speedy payment. 

How the house of Rodrigue Hortalez & Co. should be 
subsidized, if at all, by the French government, would 
seem clearly to have been a matter between Beaumarchais 
and the ministers. But, strangely enough, in after years, 
this idea appears never to have occurred to congressional 
committees, who persistently refused to pay Beaumarchais 
till they had found out all about his transactions with his 
own government. 

Beaumarchais, finding Silas Deane the accredited Ameri- 
can agent in Paris, now made all his arrangements with 
him on the new basis, perfectly unaware of the unfounded 



BEAUMARCHAIS 79 

expectations which had been excited by Lee, whose prema- 
ture statement to Congress was refuted by the actual con- 
dition of things, and who found himself, moreover, quite 
overshadowed by Deane. Lee now tried to maintain his 
ground and revenge himself by representing, in his cor- 
respondence with his influential relatives at home, that 
Beaumarchais was an unscrupulous, intriguing adventurer, 
who was trying to enrich himself out of the king's free 
gift ; and that Silas Deane had been entrapped by him, 
and induced to join in the plot. Distance and the medium 
of an imperfectly understood foreign language made this 
tangled web very hard to unravel. 

Dr. Franklin, too, who had just arrived as joint com- 
missioner with Silas Deane and Arthur Lee, was prej- 
udiced against Beaumarchais, and a strange oversight of 
his own contributed not a little to keep up the mystifica- 
tion for many years to come. Dr. Dubourg, an old gen- 
tleman, who was a warm friend of America, and who had 
translated the Declaration of Independence into French, 
to Dr. Franklin's great delight, dissatisfied to see himself 
thus overshadowed and supplanted by Beaumarchais, wrote 
to M. de Vergennes : " I have seen M. Beaumarchais this 
morning, and have conferred with him. No one does 
more justice than myself to his honesty, discretion, and 
zeal for all that is great and good. I believe him to be 
the best man in the world for political negotiations, but 
perhaps at the same time the most unfitted for commer- 
cial transactions. He likes show, and I am assured that 
he supports several young women. . . . There is not in all 
France a merchant or a manufacturer who would not 
hesitate to have business dealings with him." 

The minister, infinitely amused, sent the letter at 



80 BEAUMARCHAIS 

once to Beaumarchais himself, who thus answers the 
doctor : — 

My dear Sir, — Grant that I am wasteful and extravagant, and support 
young women : how does that affect the matter in hand ? The young women 
whom I have supported for the last twenty years are your very humble 
servants. They were five in number, four sisters and one niece. Three 
years ago two of these young women died, to my great regret, and now I 
support only three, two sisters and one niece. No doubt this is extravagant 
for a private person like me. But what would you have thought, if, know- 
ing me better, you had become aware of the outrageous fact that I have 
supported men also, two young nephews, — pretty fellows, — and even the 
unfortunate father who brought into the world such a scandalous sup- 
porter ? 

This Dubourg episode shows conclusively that the com- 
mercial character of the transaction was fully recognized 
and acknowledged, in France at least. 

Beaumarchais now went to work at his chosen task with 
such hearty good-will and abounding energy that before 
one year had elapsed he had transmitted supplies to the 
amount of a million livres. Acting under the misconcep- 
tion, however, of supposing it all a free gift from the 
King of France, Congress sent no returns of any conse- 
quence ; and when some vessels laden with tobacco were 
consigned to the American commissioners in Paris, Beau- 
marchais expostulated, but received no explanation. No 
answer came to any of his letters, nor the slightest sign of 
recognition from a government in whose cause he was 
straining every nerve. 

The English ambassador in Paris, having got wind of 
the transaction, had complained of it as an infringement 
of the treaty between the two countries, and Vergennes 
felt himself obliged to disavow and discountenance a pro- 
ceeding which he secretly favored. So vessels were de- 



BEAUMARCHAIS 8 1 

tained in port, and cargoes attached, and the representative 
of Hortalez & Co. must have had his patience sorely tried 
as he travelled in hot haste from Havre to Bordeaux, 
making herculean efforts to collect and despatch his stores 
in face of countless difficulties. At last, confounded by 
this persistent non-recognition, he sent an agent to 
America, M. de Francey, — rather too young a man for 
the purpose. He came over in the same ship with Baron 
Steuben and some gallant French officers, whom Beau- 
marchais and Marie Antoinette had fired with enthusiasm 
for America. The agent was disgusted with everything, 
saw nobody to admire but General Washington, and 
sent to his patron the most dismal and discouraging 
letters. Lee's friends were powerful, and the cabal had 
taken into partnership a disaffected sea-captain, named 
Ducoudray, who had been discharged by Beaumarchais for 
incompetency, and who now wrote a pamphlet against 
him, which was published in America, and helped to 
manufacture prejudice and create an unfavorable public 
opinion. De Francey did succeed, however, in getting 
members of Congress to read the correspondence between 
Beaumarchais and Vergennes. This may have made some 
impression, for in 1779, after two years and a half of 
thankless toil, he received at last a letter of acknowledg- 
ment in the name of Congress, written by the president, 
and ending thus : — 

While by your rare talents you were rendering yourself useful to your 
prince, you have gained the esteem of this new-born republic, and have 
earned the applause of the New World. 

John Jay, President. 

The enthusiasm of Beaumarchais had remained un- 



82 BEAUMARCHAIS 

abated through all this discouragement. He confidentially 
writes to his angry, discomfited agent : — 

" In spite of all these annoyances, the news from America fills me with joy. 
Brave, brave people ! Their military prowess fully justifies my esteem and 
the fine enthusiasm felt for them in France. In short, my friend, I look 
anxiously for returns to enable me to meet my engagements here, mainly that 
I may then make new arrangements for their advantage." 

At last, a direct question from the chairman of a con- 
gressional committee brought out the explicit declaration, 
that the supplies for America, transmitted by Beaumar- 
chais, were not given by the king. The debt was then 
acknowledged, payment promised, and all would have gone 
on smoothly but for two unfortunate circumstances. One 
was that Beaumarchais' accounts, presented in 1788, were 
referred to a committee of three, of which his arch-enemy, 
Arthur Lee, was chairman ; and the other was that mys- 
terious affair of the " lost million." 

In 1776, six months before the signing of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, this receipt was signed : — 

■ I have received from M. Duvergier, conformably to the orders of the 
Comte de Vergennes, on the 5th instant, the sum of one million livres, for 
which I am to accoitnt to the aforesaid Comte de Vergennes. 

" Caron de Beaumarchais." 

The King of France, long after this, loaned and gave 
large sums to the American commissioners to carry on 
the war. In 1783 Franklin signed a receipt for nine mil- 
lions gratuity ; yet three years after, on his return to 
America, it was discovered that only eight millions had 
passed through the hands of our banker in Paris. Dr. 
Franklin conjectured that the missing million must have 
been given to Beaumarchais for our use. In 1794 the 



BEAUMARCHAIS 83 

government of France was often in unskilled hands, and 
Gouverneur Morris, then our envoy, contrived to get from 
the minister of foreign affairs the receipt already quoted 
as given to Vergennes. Thenceforth Beaumarchais was 
charged with that sum, and his accounts were persistently 
disputed, remaining unsettled for fifty years. Talleyrand 
wrote, exonerating him. The French government exerted 
itself in his favor, and through its successive ambassadors 
to this country unwearyingly asserted the justice of his 
claim ; declaring over and over again, officially, that he 
had accounted for that million to its entire satisfaction ; 
nay, even went so far as to explain and assert that it was 
given as secret service money, and not meant for supplies, 
at all. However that may have been, the fact remains 
that his claims, after being referred to six committees of 
Congress (three reporting favorably, and three adversely), 
were set aside till 1835, thirty-six years after the death of 
Beaumarchais ; and a settlement was effected then only 
by the most persistent importunity on the part of his 
representatives. 

In exile, in 1795, from a garret near Hamburg, he ad- 
dresses the following letter to the American people : — 

" Americans, I have served you with indefatigable zeal. During my life 
bitterness has been my only reward, and I die your creditor. Permit me, 
then, as a dying man, to bequeath to you my only daughter, and to endow 
her with what you owe me. . . . Perhaps Providence has designed, by this 
delay in your payment, to provide her with means after my death, thus sav- 
ing my child from utter destitution. Adopt her as a worthy daughter of the 
state. 

" If you refuse this, if I could fear that you would deny justice to myself 
or my heirs, desperate, ruined, by Europe as well as by you, I should have 
only one prayer, — for a respite which might allow me to go to America. 
Arrived amongst you, broken down in mind and body, I should be carried to 
your capital, to the doors of your national assembly, with my accounts in my 



84 BEAUMARCHAIS 

hand ; and there, holding out to all passers-by the cap of Liberty, with which 
no man more than myself has helped to adorn your brows, I should cry out : 
Americans ! alms for your friend, for whose accumulated services behold the 
reward, ' Date obolum Belisario ' ! " 

This man, who, beginning life as a watchmaker's ap- 
prentice, had made himself an inventor, a courtier, a 
teacher in the royal family, a banker, a shipping merchant 
on a larger scale than the Medici, a dramatic author of the 
greatest popularity, a diplomatist, a cabinet counsellor, and 
a master of eloquence of European renown, was also a 
great publisher. The story of his two editions of Vol- 
taire, complete for the first time, is a chapter by itself. 
" Haunted by the fear of mediocrity," as he used to say, 
he bought paper-mills in the Vosges and went to England 
to purchase the famous Baskerville types, so as to have 
the best of materials ; and when he could find no place 
for his printing-press in France, on account of prohibition, 
he persuaded the Margrave of Baden to let him have the 
dismantled fortress of Kehl for that purpose. As Lomenie 
says, "To superintend the manufacture, printing, and pub- 
lication of these one hundred and sixty-two volumes, in- 
cluded in two editions of fifteen thousand copies each, and 
smuggle them into France, really with the connivance of 
the government, but still at the risk of prohibition, was a 
laborious enterprise for a man already overwhelmed by the 
pressure of business." Maurepas had encouraged him to 
persevere in the work, and had assured him of his sanc- 
tion ; but he died in 1781, and his death was a heavy blow 
to Beaumarchais. He managed, however, to interest 
Calonne, the successor of Maurepas, and in three years' 
time, had completed this great task. It may be mentioned 
that this is the first time we hear of premiums and a lot- 



BEAUMARCHAIS 85 

tery in connection with subscriptions for a book. The 
notes contributed by the editor are few in number, but 
characteristic. For instance, where Voltaire writes to M. 
d'Argental, " An ardent, impetuous, passionate man like 
Beaumarchais may give a box on the ear to his wife, and 
possibly two boxes on the ear to his two wives, but he 
does not poison them," he adds this note : " I certify that 
this Beaumarchais, sometimes beaten by women, like most 
men who have loved them too well, never committed the 
disgraceful act of lifting his hand against one of them." 

We have come now to the most brilliant part of his 
career. The new parliament of Louis XVI., several years 
before, had triumphantly reinstated him in his civil rights, 
and had reversed the unfavorable decision in the La Blache 
case. He was a man of large fortune and great renown, 
married for the third time to a charming woman, and on 
familiar terms with those most famous in fashion, politics, 
and letters. His liberality and kindness seem as inex- 
haustible as his energy, and his private correspondence 
and business papers teem with many touching proofs of 
his sympathy for unfortunate people, who had no claim 
whatever upon him but their sorrows. He gave not only 
money but his precious time and the magnetic virtue of 
his cordial interest. The " Barber of Seville" had acquired 
the popularity it still maintains, giving him a high place 
in the fraternity of dramatic authors ; but now he pro- 
duced the " Mariage de Figaro." Probably he had no 
definite design of disturbance in writing this comedy, 
which flashed out upon the wrongs of the poor and the 
abuses of the powerful ; but Napoleon said of it, " It is 
the Revolution in action." 

Madame Campan has told us of her reading the manu- 



86 BEAUMARCHAIS 

script aloud to Marie Antoinette and her husband, and 
how the king walked up and down the room, when she 
came to the famous monologue, exclaiming, " This is de- 
testable ! It shall never be played. So long as the 
Bastille stands, the representation of this piece would be 
a dangerous folly. This man sports with everything that 
should be respected in a government." " Can't it be 
played ? " urged the queen. " Certainly not," answered 
Louis XVI. " You may be sure of that." So the 
representation was forbidden. No one sided with the 
king but his brother, the Comte de Provence, and M. 
Mirosmenil, the keeper of the seals. All the fashionable 
world longed for the forbidden fruit, and ran wild to hear 
the author read it in private. You heard on all hands, 
" I am going to-night to hear M. Beaumarchais read the 
4 Mariage de Figaro ' ; " or, " Are you invited to-morrow to 
hear the 'Mariage de Figaro'?" The Due de Fronsac, 
son of the Due de Richelieu, writes to the author to en- 
treat him, as a great favor, to read it at the hotel of the 
Princesse de Lamballe, and Catherine of Russia sends for 
him to bring it out in St. Petersburg. The manuscript 
used at these readings is still extant, tied with faded pink 
ribbons, and the words "opuscule comique" on the outside, 
in the author's handwriting. 

After a three years' battle between Beaumarchais and 
all Paris, on the one hand, and the king, his brother, and 
the keeper of the seals, on the other, the popular party 
gained the day, and the piece was represented. The 
effect was prodigious. Beaumarchais himself says, " If 
there is one thing more extravagant than my piece, it is 
its success." 

" It will come to an end," said one of his enemies, be- 



BEAUMARCHAIS 87 

hind the scenes, on the evening of the first representation. 
"Yes," answered Sophie Arnould, "fifty times over." 
The witty actress was wrong ; it was acted more than a 
hundred times in succession. 

The elder brother of the king had been very much an- 
noyed on the opening night, and through a M. Suard con- 
stantly sent to the newspapers unfavorable criticisms of 
the piece and abuse of its author, suggested, if not written 
by Monsieur himself. Whether Beaumarchais knew this 
or not, he began by replying with his usual gayety and 
readiness, but after a while, weary, probably, of the whole 
thing, he sent a communication to the Journal de Paris, 
declining in future to notice these attacks, and saying that 
"when he had brought out his play in spite of lions and 
tigers, he did not mean, after it had succeeded, to spend 
his time fighting every morning, like a Dutch servant-girl, 
the vile insect of the night." "Monsieur" took the insult 
to himself, and went in high dudgeon to the king, whom 
he found playing cards, and who consented at once to 
punish this daring Beaumarchais by writing on the seven 
of clubs, which he held in his hand, an order for his im- 
mediate incarceration in the prison of St. Lazare, used as 
a house of correction for young offenders. The king may 
have given vent in this way to his suppressed irritation in 
regard to the piece. It must be said, however, that it is 
the only act of inexcusable tyranny attributed to Louis 
XVI. 

One roar of laughter went up from Paris the next morn- 
ing, when it was known that this favorite author and illus- 
trious man was shut up in prison for his impetuous sally. 
He stayed there only three days, and at last was almost 
entreated to come out. The king had repented of his 



88 BEAUMARCHAIS 

precipitation, and may have been rendered uneasy by the 
popular demonstration, which was losing its jocular tone, 
and becoming serious in its character. He sent the pris- 
oner a handsome sum of money, which was declined all 
but a hundred francs, — the amount, perhaps, of his expen- 
diture during his detention. On his release he repaired 
to the theatre, where the obnoxious play was being repre- 
sented, and received an uproarious welcome. It was a 
long time before the actors could go on, and the deafening 
applause was renewed when they came to this phrase in 
the great monologue : " Not being able to degrade wit, 
they maltreat it." Soon after this the " Barber of Se- 
ville " was acted at the Trianon, the queen herself taking 
the part of Rosine ; and the author was invited to be 
present, a delicate way of making reparation for the insult 
which he had received. 

Apart from its historic significance, the " Mariage de 
Figaro" does not interest us to-day. The plot is objection- 
able, and the wit often licentious. Most of the abuses he 
satirizes no longer exist, though we may still need remind- 
ing, even here in the United States of America, that 
"without the privilege of blaming, no praise is flattering," 
and that "only petty men dread insignificant writings." 1 
One passage, however, commonly omitted in representa- 
tion, though found in all standard editions of the play, 
may be worth quoting. Marceline, the mother of Figaro, 
is speaking, and she says, — 

" Men, more than ungrateful, who wither with your 
scorn the playthings of your passions, your victims, you 
should be made to suffer also for the errors of our youth. 
. . . What employment is there left for these miserable 

1 II n'y a que les petits hommes qui redoutent les petits ecrits. 



BEAUMARCHAIS 89 

young women ? They have a natural right to busy them- 
selves with female apparel, and thousands of men are set 
to work upon it." 

Figaro, angrily : " Yes, even the soldiers now are made 
to embroider." 

Marceline : " Even in the higher ranks women obtain 
from you only derisive consideration, lured by pretended 
respect into real servitude, 1 treated as irresponsible minors 
in regard to our property, and punished as responsible 
beings for our faults." 

So a reformer of the present day may find a text in the 
" Mariage de Figaro." 

The Parisian public was very much excited at this time 
by the production of his philosophical, political, and scien- 
tific opera, entitled "Tarare," in which he aimed at pro- 
ducing all the effect of a Greek drama, combining dancing, 
music, and poetry with more solid attractions, but substi- 
tuting scientific statement for the Greek mythology. The 
best pupil of Gluck, Salieri, composed the music, and the 
piece had a great run. Wonderful to relate, it was popular, 
and kept its place on the stage, under different metamor- 
phoses, till 1 8 19. 

The 14th of July, 1789, found Beaumarchais busily 
superintending the erection of a magnificent dwelling- 
house, close by the Bastille. He did not occupy it till 
1 79 1, and it was thenceforth a fertile source of annoyance 
in those troublous times. It became the wonder of Paris, 
but in 18 18 it was pulled down, to carry out the new plans 
for improving the city. Beaumarchais took charge of the 
demolition of the Bastille at his own request, but he was 
far from sympathizing with the extremists, and wrote an 

1 Traitees en mineures pour nos biens, punies en majeures pour nos fautes. 



90 BEAUMARCHAIS 

address to the French people, which he sent to the 
Jacobins. It begins thus : " I defy the devil to carry on 
any business in these frightful days of disorder, misnamed 
liberty ; " and he ends with these words : " O my weeping 
country, O wretched Frenchmen, to what purpose have 
you overthrown Bastilles, if robbers are to come and dance 
over the ruins, and slaughter us upon them ? Friends of 
freedom, know that license and anarchy are its execu- 
tioners. Join me in demanding laws of these deputies, 
who owe them to us, who have been made our representa- 
tives solely for that purpose. Let us be at peace with 
Europe. Was it not the most glorious day of our lives 
when that peace was proclaimed to the world ? Your 
maxims will be established, will be propagated, far better, 
if you are shown to have been made happy by them, — far 
better than they can possibly be by war and devastation. 
Are you happy ? Tell the truth. Is it not with French 
blood that our land is deluged ? Speak ! is there one of 
us who has not tears to shed ? Peace, laws, and a con- 
stitution, — without these blessings we have no country; 
worse than all, no freedom ! " A man who writes, signs, 
and publishes such words as these on the sixth of March, 
1793, and then stays in Paris, is not cowardly. As Sainte- 
Beuve says : " The only wonder is that he kept his head 
on his shoulders." 

In 1792 France needed arms, and Beaumarchais under- 
took to obtain them in Holland. Sent after them in 1794 
by the committee of public safety, he was put on the list 
of emigrants by the department of Paris, which confiscated 
his property, seized and destroyed his papers, imprisoned 
his sister, wife, and daughter, and declared him a public 
enemy. He took refuge at last in Hamburg, and could 



BEAUMARCHAIS 91 

not return till long after the death of Robespierre had 
opened the prison doors and set his family at liberty. His 
daughter had a horror of their magnificent house, where 
they had all suffered so much ; nothing could induce her 
to return to it ; so she hid herself away with her mother, 
while his sister Julia, in order to preserve the property 
from destruction, lived there entirely alone, in great pov- 
erty, for a whole year, subject to constant annoyance from 
domiciliary visits. At last, under the Directory, they were 
reunited in the great house, and Beaumarchais tried to 
gather up what was left of the wreck of his fortune. The 
old man felt the prevailing enthusiasm for Bonaparte, and 
addressed some verses to the young conqueror, adjuring 
him to add one more to his glorious deeds, and remember 
the prisoners at Olmutz. It was like Beaumarchais to 
remind him of Lafayette then. He had also become much 
interested in the use to be made of balloons, in war and 
in peace, and busied himself in preparing a memorial, ad- 
dressed to the Directory, on the massacre of the French 
plenipotentiaries at Rastadt. This was his last work. 
On a May morning, 1799, the old man was found dead in 
his bed : probably the cause of his death was apoplexy. 
The last evening with his family had been gay and pleas- 
ant, as usual. 

He left an only child, his daughter Eugenie, married, 
after the Terror, to M. Delarue, aid-de-camp to Lafayette. 
His widow writes after his death, " Our loss is irreparable : 
the companion of twenty-five years has vanished, leaving 
only useless regret, a terrible loneliness, and ineffaceable 
memories. He readily forgave his enemies, and gladly 
overlooked an injury. He was a good father, a zealous 
and serviceable friend, and the born champion of any 



92 BEAUMARCHAIS 

absent person attacked in his presence. Superior to the 
petty jealousy so common among men of letters, he coun- 
selled and encouraged all, helping them with his money 
and advice. We should be grateful for the manner of his 
death ; it saved him the pain of parting. He quitted this 
life as unconsciously as he entered it." 

He had been quite deaf for the last few years, but he 
never lost his enjoyment of a joke, and liked to sign him- 
self, "The first poet in Paris, entering by the Porte St. 
Antoine." The inscription on the collar of his little dog 
has often been quoted: "I am Mile. Follette. Beaumar- 
chais belongs to me. We live on the Boulevard." 

Sullied by the faults and vices of his day and generation, 
dissolute at times in life and utterance, he yet seems to 
have been invariably generous and affectionate in his 
family relations, and was idolized as a son and a brother. 
Fond of display and reckless in speculation, always savor- 
ing somewhat of an adventurer, he still devoted himself 
unremittingly and unsparingly to works of public utility 
and private beneficence. Imprudent, often quixotic in these 
enterprises, he was nevertheless remarkable for practical 
knowledge and shrewd common sense. His energy and 
industry were wonderful, and his kindness of heart and 
ready sympathy appear to have been inexhaustible. 

His bust stands to-day in the Comedie Franchise in 
Paris. Should there not be a niche in American memories 
for our friend in need ; a man like him, thus associated 
with the early days of our history ; one who, while striv- 
ing to help himself, never forgot to help others ? Was 
not Eugenie Delarue justified in the pride with which she 
said to the conqueror of Austerlitz, " I am the daughter of 
Beaumarchais " ? 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE 
REVOLUTION 



It was a great misfortune to be born a girl in a noble 
French family of the eighteenth century ; for all the 
interest centred in the boys, and the daughters were to be 
disposed of as cheaply as was consistent with their name, 
consigned to a loveless marriage, or the relaxed rule of con- 
vent life. Before Jean Jacques Rosseau shamed mothers 
into nursing their own children, the poor little creatures 
were hustled off at once to the country, there to stay with 
the foster-nurse till old enough to be intrusted to the 
care of a governess, who occupied, with her charge, some 
remote part of the house quite out of the way. The chil- 
dren only left this secluded apartment at eleven o'clock, 
when they were usually taken for a few minutes to their 
mother's dressing-room to say good-morning, and the little 
girl was permitted to kiss her mamma, provided she did so 
politely, under her chin, so as not to rub off the rouge. 
In pleasant weather, clad in all their best attire, they also 
walked once a day in the Tuileries garden, but no romping 
was allowed. 

The governess was expected to teach her pupils to read, 
write, and hold themselves straight. At the age of seven 
music-lessons began. The little girl had a master for the 

93 



94 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

harpsichord, learned to dance, and was also taught her 
catechism. 

There were children's balls and baptisms, and on both 
occasions these unfortunate creatures appeared attired 
in high head-dresses and paniers. They even wore 
rouge. At the age of eleven or twelve they were usu- 
ally sent to some fashionable convent. In the delightful 
book by Lucien Perey, entitled, " The Life of a Great 
Lady in the Eighteenth Century," we find very interesting 
descriptions of one of these schools for girls of high rank. 
Often married between the ages of twelve and fifteen, 
they sometimes returned to the convent immediately after 
the ceremony to take up their school life again, and com- 
plete their education before assuming the responsibilities 
of married women, and entering the gay world bearing 
the name of husbands chosen for them by friends and 
relatives without any reference to the wishes of the girls, 
often without any previous acquaintance. This was espe- 
cially the case when the contracting parties were of high 
rank. 

In the memoirs of Madame d'Epinay we have the fol- 
lowing account of the way in which Madame d'Houdetot 
was married, and we cannot wonder at her subsequent 
unhappiness. 

" M. de Rinville called on M. de Bellegarde to propose 
one of his cousins, a well-behaved young man, as a. hus- 
band for his god-daughter, M. de Bellegarde's daughter 
Mimi. They appoint a day for a great dinner, to which 
all the members of both families are invited, and Mimi is 
made aware of the importance of the occasion. 

" Being introduced on her arrival at the de Rinvilles', 
the Marquise d'Hondetot, mother of the bridegroom elect, 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 95 

kissed all the Bellegardes, root and branch. At dinner, 
Mimi was placed beside the young d'Houdetot, while the 
mother took possession of M. de Bellegarde, and by the 
time they came to the dessert the marriage was openly 
discussed. When coffee had been brought in, and the 
servants had retired, ' Well,' said M. de Rinville, ' here we 
are all together ; there is no occasion for so much mystery. 
What do you say, M. de Bellegarde, yes or no : does my 
cousin suit you, and does he suit your daughter ? Let us 
come to the point. Our young count is already in love. 
If your daughter likes him, let her say so. Speak up, my 
god-daughter.' Mimi blushed very much, but said nothing. 
One of the ladies present interposed, exclaiming, ' Oh, 
give them time to breathe!' — 'Very well,' saidM.de 
Rinville, 'we can arrange the preliminaries, and leave these 
young people to talk a little together.' No sooner said 
than done. The two fathers went into a corner to discuss 
the dowry and settlements, and in a few minutes rose and 
came forward, saying, * It is all decided. We can sign 
the contract to-night, publish the banns Sunday, and get a 
dispensation for the rest, so that Monday can be the 
wedding-day. It will be easy to leave word with the 
notary and give all the invitations on our way home.' 

" That very evening, at the house of M. de Bellegarde, 
the contract was signed by the members of these two 
families, till that day almost total strangers to each other. 
While the notary was reading the agreement aloud, the 
Marchioness d'Houdetot called Mimi across the room and 
gave her two caskets of family diamonds, of which the 
value was left in blank in the contract, there being no 
time to appraise them. Everybody signed ; they sat down 
to supper, and the wedding took place on the following 



g6 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

Monaay. The night before the wedding all the intimate 
friends and relations called to inspect the ' corbeille,' given 
by the bridegroom, and the next day the bride, attired in 
cloth of silver trimmed with seed-pearls and brilliants, 
with orange blossoms in her hair, entered the church, 
escorted by two groomsmen. 

" Noon was the common hour for weddings ; but the 
ceremony sometimes took place after midnight. The 
bride was expected to kiss all the women who were invited, 
and she presented each one with a fan and hand-bag. 
Then came the wedding tour that lasted about a week, 
the newly married couple usually going to some chateau 
belonging to some of the family. 

" On their return they were to appear in state at the 
opera in an especial box reserved for these occasions. 
Next came the presentation at court, and the inexperi- 
enced girl, launched in society, was henceforward beset 
by the numberless temptations of the fashionable world 
at that corrupt period. If she had fallen in love with her 
husband, and he had felt the charm of her youth and 
freshness, all went well for a time ; but not infrequently 
wedded life became monotonous, and he soon sighed for 
his bachelor freedom." 

If it was bourgeois to be devoted to your husband, and 
still more so to expect him to be devoted to you, it was 
hopelessly ridiculous to be punctilious in attention to re- 
ligious duties, and few women of rank and fashion per- 
sonally superintended their households. Naturally there 
was a great deal of waste and lazy inefficiency ; but then 
high-bred servants never expected to do much work. 

Goncourt gives the following description of the life of a 
fine lady in the eighteenth century : " She opened her eyes 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 97 

about eleven o'clock behind the close-drawn curtains of 
her bed in the carefully shaded room, and summoned her 
maid, who lighted the fire and then brought her a cup of 
chocolate. Sitting on the side of her couch, perhaps play- 
ing with a lap-dog, she allowed the attendant to put on 
her slippers and pass a skirt over her head. Then, after 
her ablutions, she was rolled in an easy-chair in front of 
her toilet-table. The door had already opened to admit a 
gallant who, seated by the great carved chest that holds 
the dresses, one elbow resting on the toilet-table, watched 
the proceedings with friendly interest, making a sugges- 
tion now and then. 

"Then came the 'grand levee,' more visitors arrived, — 
wits, statesmen, officers of the royal household. Compli- 
ments abounded, and all the news was told. Notes were 
read and answered on a corner of the toilet, while the hair- 
dresser ignored, and sometimes at his wits' end, endeavored 
to arrange the fair tresses in the last complicated style. ' If 
she would only sit still ! ' Tradesmen sent their goods to be 
inspected, the Beau Brummels of the day gave their opin- 
ion about the becomingness of such a tint or fashion, the 
doctor called, and the last pamphlet or bon-mot was dis- 
cussed. Once dressed, the lady took her lesson on the 
harp or harpsichord, or practised the last new song. Per- 
haps, if she were a patient of Tronchin, the Rousseau of 
medicine, she might order a horse with gay housings, his 
mane braided with ribbons, and, followed by a servant, 
gallop to the Bois de Boulogne, dressed in a green satin 
jacket braided with gold, and a pink skirt trimmed with 
silver lace. Sometimes, towards the end of the century, — 
in 1786, for instance, when they tried hard to be simple, — 
she wore instead a nankeen riding-habit with ivory buttons, 



98 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

three rolling collars, and a little green vest with a white 
cravat of flimsy gauze loosely knotted about her throat. 
The head-gear for this remarkable riding-dress was a 
canary-colored felt hat with green and white plumes, and 
the hair tied in a queue hung down the back. 

Before the great doctor, Tronchin, had made exercise in 
the open air fashionable, the reading of the last new tale 
by Marmontel, or a pamphlet of Beaumarchais, filled up the 
time till the dinner hour, that varied from one to four 
o'clock. 

" After dinner the carriage came to the door, and the 
lady made visits, did a little shopping, went to see the last 
fine piece of tapestry on exhibition, or perhaps to a fire if, 
fortunately for her, there happened to be a conflagration. 
Then about sunset she alighted at the entrance of the 
Tuileries garden, the palace being then unoccupied. This 
was the fashionable promenade, and parties were some- 
times made to sup informally at the gate-keeper's. In the 
evening, the gate once locked, they could have the garden 
all to themselves. Or perhaps there was an entertainment 
at some great house in * Cours-la-Reine ' where the festiv- 
ities were kept up till dawn. More frequently, however, 
when it was not an opera night nor an especial occasion 
at the theatre, the fashionable world congregated in sum- 
mer-time at some one of the great fairs in and about Paris. 
Later the boulevards took the place of the Tuileries as a 
promenade, especially on Thursdays. Towards 1 750 a taste 
for science prevailed, and after dinner, now deferred till 
three o'clock, the women of fashion went to hear lectures, 
to see experiments at the Jardin des Plantes, or to Greuze's 
studio to admire his last picture. The triflers would make 
up parties to have their profiles cut out in paper, or would 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 99 

sit in their carriages to see the procession of three hun- 
dred and thirteen French slaves recently ransomed in 
Algiers. Sometimes, after paying for a mass to be said 
for the success of a balloon ascension, they would call on 
the aerostat and bid him godspeed with a kiss." 

In one of the books of this period we find a sketch of 
the pastimes of a fashionable woman: "As she drives 
along the boulevard she espies an acquaintance, and, stop- 
ping her carriage, invites him to accompany her to her 
anatomy lesson. On the way they meet a mutual friend, 
a fair lady, who urges them to give her their advice at an 
important consultation at her milliner's. On leaving the 
shop, a servant in livery accosts the lady. He is the 
bearer of a message from his master, who begs them to go 
with him to witness some new experiments in gases. ' With 
all my heart ! ' the lady answers ; ' I should like nothing 
better. Only you must solemnly promise that there shall 
be no explosions. How kind of you,' she continues to the 
Baron, who is now standing by the carriage door. * Get in 
with us and tell the coachman where to go.' The Baron 
gives the address, but before they arrive at the designated 
place she exclaims, ' But I had entirely forgotten my 
lesson in physics. Why won't you all come there with me 
first ?' They agree to do so ; but on the way a new impor- 
tation of parrots, at a bird fancier's, catches the lady's eye ; 
she alights, makes some new acquisition, and starts again, 
recognized, however, by a gentleman, who stops the car- 
riage to say that they must go with him to the Blind 
Asylum to see the printing. How delightfully unique ! 
but just then some one mentioning a new picture that may 
be sent away soon, it is decided that, since the printing for 
the blind will probably go on indefinitely, it is best to go 



100 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

at once to the painter's studio. The conversation takes an 
artistic turn, and one of the party acknowledging that he 
paints a little as an amateur, they resolve immediately to 
stop at his hotel to see his pictures. Before they reach the 
door, however, the lady cries out, ' Good heavens ! I had 
entirely forgotten that the century-plant in the King's 
garden is in full bloom to-day. Unless we see it now we 
never shall have another chance in all our lives.' Where- 
upon escort number one says to his fair friend, ' But, 
madame, I thought you were going to your anatomy 
lesson ? ' " 

Pets of all kinds were numerous, — lap-dogs, great Angora 
cats, parrots, squirrels, and monkeys, and every little 
while there was a mania for some new amusement. At 
one time cutting out pictures to paste on screens was all 
the rage, and beautiful, rare engravings were destroyed in 
great numbers in that way. Then jumping-jacks were in 
vogue, and were ordered at high prices from celebrated 
painters of the day, Boucher, for instance. In 1749 these 
toys went out of fashion, and fabulous sums were paid for 
cups and balls with which every one played. Crochet and 
netting next came in vogue, and ladies took their work to 
the theatre. But the greatest craze of all was " parfilage," 
— unravelling stuffs so as to get the gold and silver threads 
interwoven ; and the wonderful stories told of the money 
that could be made in this way remind one of the tales we 
have all heard of the rewards awaiting the indefatigable 
collector of half a million of postage-stamps. It was hard 
for a man with braided coat to escape the scissors of these 
fair spoilers, and it is said that the Duke of Orleans had 
imitation lace sewed on his court-dress so as to cheat his 
robber-friends in the salons he frequented. 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION IOI 

About midway in the century, with an interval of fif- 
teen months before 1753, — an interregnum spent in close 
confinement at Dijon, — the brilliant chatelaine Louise de 
Bourbon, granddaughter of the great Conde, held high 
court at Sceaux, about five miles south of Paris. Born 
in 1676, she was married, when only sixteen, to the Duke 
of Maine, son of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. 
He was the beloved and docile pupil of Madame de Main- 
tenon, a man of literary and scientific tastes, rather 
inclined to devotion. At the time of their marriage 
Louise de Bourbon was so tiny and frail that she looked 
hardly more than ten, but even then she was remarkable 
for her incessant activity of body and mind. 

She is not attractive morally on account of her phe- 
nomenal egotism. So long as any one contributed to her 
comfort, pleasure, or amusement, she was delightful, and 
seemed very loving ; but if the same person on whom 
she had lavished caresses died, or passed out of her life, she 
never took the trouble even to affect a grief that she 
seems incapable of feeling. She was an author of some 
repute, among other things writing lively comedies, in 
which she liked to take the principal part at her private 
theatricals of frequent occurrence. 

There was always an apartment at Sceaux kept in 
readiness for Voltaire, who often produced light plays and 
proverbs for the stage of the chateau. It was there, too, 
that he wrote " Zadig ; " and his " Oreste " is dedicated 
to the Duchesse du Maine. 

She had always been a great pet of Louis XIV., and, 
after his death, terribly disappointed to find her husband 
and herself overshadowed by the Orleans family, the 
Duchess conspired against the Regency, and was summa- 



102 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

rily punished by fifteen months' imprisonment in the 
castle of Dijon. Her husband, whom she had drawn into 
the plot, was confined in the citadel of Doullens ; and the 
only companion of this brilliant butterfly, in her close 
confinement of more than a year, was a waiting-woman in 
the employ of her enemy, the Duke of Orleans. 

Once more restored to liberty, the Duke du Maine did 
not seem very eager to go back to Sceaux, where his 
wife, as soon as she was set free, began to reorganize her 
old court. She had been obliged, however, to take an 
oath that she would never again interfere in politics ; and 
she kept her word. 

For her own amusement the Duchess at once revived 
an order of chivalry that had been a secret society in her 
political phase. Both women and men were members ; 
and it was called the " Order of the Bee " — " Lordre de 
la Mouche a Miel." Their device, taken from the Aminta 
of Tasso, once quoted to describe her as a girl, was, " Pic- 
cola si, ma fa pur gravi le ferite : " — " She is little, but she 
does sting." She herself was the Queen-bee, and on ini- 
tiation all swore fealty to their sovereign. The oath was 
as follows : " I solemnly swear, by the bees of Mount Hy- 
mettus, fidelity and obedience to the perpetual directress of 
the order, to wear all my life the medal of the Bees, and, if 
I prove false to my oath, I hope that for me honey may 
turn into gall, wax into tallow, and flowers to nettles, and 
that wasps and hornets may plague me with their stings." 

At the ceremony of initiation an immense hive was 
placed in the middle of a large, green carpet, sprinkled 
with silver bees. As soon as all had taken their places 
the top of the hive was lifted so as to form a canopy, 
under which appeared the grand-master of the order in 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION IO3 

the guise of an enormous bee. He was seated on a 
throne, and, as a sceptre, held a dart three feet long. 
Then the herald came forth, bowed low before the Duchess, 
and read aloud the statutes of the order, the grand-master 
threatening with his dart those whose gayety tended to 
become obstreperous. The festivities ended with dancing 
around the hive. The dress of the Duchess on these 
occasions was gorgeous, — a robe of green satin, low- 
necked, embroidered with silver bees ; a crown of emerald 
bees on her head, and a mantle of cloth of gold fastened 
to her shoulders. The chevaliers, thirty-nine in number, 
all wore surcoats of cloth of gold embroidered with silver 
bees, and each one was decorated with a gold medal, bear- 
ing on one side the initials of Louise, Baronne de Sceaux, 
and on the other a bee buzzing about a hive. The herald 
was robed in scarlet satin also embroidered with the 
emblem ; and he wore on his head a cap shaped like a bee- 
hive. After the revival of the society, when political 
intrigues were forbidden, the order seems to have resolved 
itself, at its regular meetings, into what we should now 
call a " Game Club," the members taking turns in propos- 
ing and organizing various diversions. 

The splendid chateau where all these festivities took 
place, with its rare art-treasures, its portraits and fresco- 
paintings by Lebrun, was destroyed in 1798. Fortunately 
a few statues were saved that now adorn the Luxembourg 
gallery. The great park belongs now to the Duke of 
Trevise, who has built a new chateau ; but a little corner 
of this grand estate, formerly the delight of Colbert, has 
been bought by a company, and its old terraces and shady 
gardens have been for years a democratic resort, — Les 
bals de Sceaux. 



104 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

It has been said that the age of Louis XV. was all for 
the present, and that of Louis XVI. all for the future. 

There is certainly a marked contrast if we turn from 
the chateau de Sceaux and its brilliant frivolity to the 
Parisian salons described in 1765 by Horace Walpole, in 
his letters to Sir Horace Mann. Hardly more than ten 
years have elapsed, and what a transformation ! Anglo- 
mania now prevailed ; and the old-bachelor admirer of 
poor, blind Madame du Deffand complains bitterly of the 
assiduous devotion to whist and dissertations. " Nothing 
can be more unvaried," he says, "than the routine in the 
fashionable world. You dine at half-past two, sup at ten. 
When you do not go to the theatre, you begin a rubber 
of whist before supper, leave it in the middle, partake of 
three courses and a dessert, and then go back to the card- 
table, where there is often a second rubber. Then the 
women bring out their crochet, you draw up your chairs, 
and an interminable discussion begins of some literary or 
religious question till it is time to go to bed, or, more 
properly speaking, time to get up." The rage for whist 
and Clarissa Harlowe seemed to him equally absurd, and 
he was disgusted with the popularity of Hume, just then 
the great social success. 

It is interesting to read his observations upon the place 
accorded to women in French society, so different from 
their position in England where, he says, men treat women 
with no more respect than their horses. 

Horace Walpole's cousin, wife of the English ambassa- 
dor in Paris, tells him that between the ages of thirty and 
forty women are much more admired in France than when 
they were very young, and he decides that she is right. 
Quite carried away by their charm, he exclaims, " If you 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 105 

should ask me who are the really agreeable people of my 
acquaintance, I should answer, 'A great many French- 
women, some Englishmen, a few Englishwomen, and very 
few Frenchmen.' " In fact, he does not like the men at 
all, though he is very happy in Paris when he has success- 
fully asserted his right to do as he pleases, never to touch 
a card, nor to take part in an argument. He obtains even 
a dispensation from doing homage to the authors who 
are lionized in the " salons." "Every woman of fashion," 
he writes, " has two or three of these plants, and, Heaven 
knows, they are well watered." 

How many interesting women are sketched by him in 
his portrait-gallery letters ! 

The two great salons at this time were really two rival 
courts, the only ones in Paris, since the King lived eight 
miles away at Versailles. One of these salons was at the 
Palais Royal and the other at the Temple. 

The Orleans family, of course, reigned at the Palais 
Royal ; and their court was presided over by the beautiful 
Madame de Blot, lady in waiting to the Duchesse de Char- 
tres. As good as she was beautiful, she had converted the 
Duke of Orleans from a passionate admirer into a most 
respectful and devoted friend. 

After reading Clarissa Harlowe, however, Madame dc 
Blot becomes a trifle too sentimental for the taste of the 
nineteenth century. She used to wear around her neck a 
miniature copy of the facade of the church in which her 
brother was buried. Another attraction at the Palais 
Royal seems to have been a lively little fright of a woman, 
mother-in-law of Marie Antoinette's friend, the Countess 
Jules de Polignac. One day when some one was praised 
before her on account of her vivacity, she demurred 



106 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

and said, " Yes, — but her liveliness always suggests 
fleas." 

Then there was the beautiful Marquise de Fleury, with 
her impulsive, childish ways. We do not wonder that 
Horace Walpole exclaimed, " How do they manage to get 
along with her at home ? " when we read that one even- 
ing, coming back from a court reception at Versailles that 
she had probably found tiresome, she stopped on her way 
home at Madame Guemenee's who was receiving, pulled 
off her trained gown and paniers, and went about among 
the guests in corset, boa, and a little dimity petticoat, 
outside of which dangled two large pockets. She had 
great pride of birth. When Turgot attacked the privileges 
of the nobles it excited her ire, and she said to a lady who 
admired him, " However great my respect for the king, 
I never consider myself indebted to his majesty; nobles 
have sometimes conferred the royal prerogative on their 
sovereigns, but I defy you to name any king to whom we 
owe our rank." 

The rival salon at the Temple was the h6tel of the 
Prince de Conti, where the great attractions were music, 
sometimes performed by Mozart himself, no ceremony and 
no servants. At the afternoon teas, noble ladies in fancy 
dress cut the cake, made and passed around the tea, 
and at the informal suppers, dumb waiters obviated the 
necessity of menial service. 

Here the observed of all observers was the Countess 
de Boufflers, so admired by Horace Walpole, always sur- 
rounded by women as well as men, who did homage to 
her unrivalled charm, supreme in spite of her forty years. 
The Countess Amelie de Boufflers, her daughter-in-law, was 
always there, a gay and pretty woman, very accomplished 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION IO7 

and ready at repartee. She could say charming things on 
the spur of the moment. There was a fashionable game, 
played a great deal at that time, called "Boats." You 
were to imagine yourself on the point of perishing, with 
the two persons whom you loved or ought to love the best, 
and you were asked the very trying question : If you 
could only save one, which should it be ? The Countess 
Amelia was supposed to be in the boat with her mother- 
in-law and her own mother, who had not brought her up, 
and whom she had scarcely ever seen. When asked which 
one she should save, she answered, " I should save my 
mother, and then drown myself with my mother-in-law." 
She had a very sweet voice, and her harp was a great 
delight at the chamber concerts, frequently presided over 
by the Prince de Conti as manager. 

All the Court attended the Monday suppers at the 
Temple, and it shows how small the " beau monde " then 
was when we read of there being a hundred and fifty 
persons at once in the Conti drawing-rooms, evidently 
considered a large assembly by the narrator. 

The Conde family gave two great balls in a year, but 
usually they entertained their guests at Chantilly, where 
everything was sumptuous and magnificent. 

In 1750 the Marechale de Luxembourg had the most 
celebrated salon in Paris. She gave usually two suppers 
a week, and to be received at her house was a criterion of 
good standing, while to be condemned by her closed every 
door against you. It was the headquarters of refined 
society, the school par excellence of good manners. 

The Beauvais Hotel had a peculiar charm in the sym- 
pathy and respect inspired by the admirable old couple 
who gave to the world such a beautiful example of con- 



108 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

jugal devotion and faithful attachment to friends through 
good and evil report. Choiseul in disgrace, Necker in his 
fluctuating popularity, even Lomenie de Brienne in his 
downfall, found them always the same, sincere, stanch, 
and true. 

The Marechale d'Anville also kept open house, from 
which she was apt to be absent when she and Mademoiselle 
de TEspinasse had hurried through their dinner so as to 
go off together to a " stance " at the Academy. A great 
friend of the Encyclopedists, she obtained a safe conduct 
for Voltaire when he was in real danger, and was more 
devoted than any other woman of rank to Turgot and his 
reforms, her reward being a vulgar popular caricature, in 
which her name was associated with that of the great 
minister of finance. She was never cured, however, of her 
passion for the public good ; her heart went out to all 
Utopian schemes, and she sympathized warmly with the 
most progressive ideas. 

In sharp contrast, the Princess de Robecq was a bitter 
enemy of the Encyclopedists. Under her eye, and in 
part at her dictation, Palissot wrote his abusive comedy 
" Philosophies," and, just before her death, she contrived 
to obtain from the Duke de Choiseul, then minister, per- 
mission to have it represented, favorable though he was 
to the men attacked by Palissot, who apparently aspired 
to be the French Aristophanes. 

Madame du Deffand, who in her fourteen years' corre- 
spondence with Horace Walpole gives us such admirable 
portraits of her contemporaries, is herself an interesting 
figure. She embodies the dissatisfaction with life and the 
restless need of amusement, the oppression that seems to 
weigh down so many persons at that time in the stillness 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION IO9 

before the storm. Her " herculean weakness," as she 
calls it, sustains her, blind and old as she is, in the most 
wearisome round of gayety. M. Caro says that her fear 
of solitude, and her intimate conviction of the nothing- 
ness of the society in which she incessantly sought 
diversion, illustrates Pascal's saying, " We only seek 
conversation and amusement because we cannot stay at 
home alone and enjoy ourselves." It might be said of 
her, as Chateaubriand once said of himself, that she 
yawned out her life. Her capacity for friendship is shown 
when she writes of the President de Henault, with whom 
she had been long intimate : " The President is not well. 
I do not believe he will live through the winter. His loss 
would be a grief to me, and would make a change in my 
life." And she says of Mile, Lespinasse who had been 
devoted to her during ten years before the great rupture 
and subsequent rivalry, " Mile. Lespinasse died last night 
at two o'clock. Formerly that would have been an event 
for me ; now it is nothing at all." 

She never seemed to care truly for any one but Wal- 
pole, and this half-posthumous affection makes you smile 
even while you are sorry for the poor old woman so 
desperate about this skittish old bachelor. M. Caro, in 
his admirable sketch, speaks of the passion that forgets 
how late it is — all the charms of heart and mind lavished 
by the fascinating woman of seventy-one on the half- 
scared Hippolytus who seems not to be so much afraid of 
Phedre's love as of the ridicule to which she might sub- 
ject him at his club in London or in the court circle. It 
is a little psychological episode that excites your sympathy 
while it provokes a smile. 

Correspondence in those days was an engrossing occu- 



IIO FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

pation and a fine art. Madame Geoffrin made it a rule 
never to let a day pass without writing at least two letters, 
and Madame du Deffand always made two drafts of the 
most ordinary note or letter. 

It is easy to imagine how the health of the French 
women of the upper classes must have suffered from the 
artificial life they led. The use of rouge and powder was 
most injurious, and the unnatural constraint of their 
dress prevented their deriving any real benefit from what 
time they spent in the open air. Their head-gear was 
exceedingly cumbrous, and so complicated that they could 
not run the risk of disarranging it often by wearing hats, 
and the close-cut charmilles in the gardens and parks 
were invented to allow them to walk without exposure to 
the rays of the sun. 

Love of nature seems to have been unknown till it was 
revealed to them by Rousseau ; and residence in the 
country was generally considered tantamount to exile. 

In the bourgeoisie life was essentially different. The 
daughters usually remained under the mothers' direction, 
except for a year or two passed at a quiet convent, very 
different from those chosen by the aristocracy. 

Akin to the people by the habit of labor, and affiliated 
with the nobility by opulence, the young girl of the 
middle class was trained for household duties as well as 
social obligations. Her life had two sides, one of study 
and tasteful accomplishments, the other of active occupa- 
tion, manual labor, or the intelligent superintendence of 
servants' work. At home one master followed another in 
the course of the day : teachers of geography, history, 
music, and drawing, with a dancing-master who taught her 
to make a low courtesy and other details of graceful 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION III 

demeanor. But these lessons, like the beautiful dresses 
worn on great occasions, enriched and adorned, but did 
not constitute her life. 

The young daughter interrupted her practising to run 
out and buy parsley or salad for the table, to go in the 
kitchen and make an omelet, to shell pease, or to skim 
the soup. Goncourt says that they seem to have been 
brought up with the good sense of Moliere and the graces 
of Madame de Pompadour. Marriages were founded on 
preference ; and the young girls were left free to accept 
or refuse an offer. Sometimes a young man was kept a 
long time on probation. Though, towards the end of the 
century they imitated the court fashions in dress and lan- 
guage, their pleasures remained much more healthful and 
invigorating, excursions in the country, visits to exhi- 
bitions of pictures, concerts and theatrical entertainments, 
such joys as gladdened the girl-life of Mademoiselle 
Phlipon, for we cannot forget that from this stock came 
Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday. 

Madame de Stael, with her Protestant-Swiss antecedents 
and education, was an exceptional case of development. 

Marie Antoinette, too, was not a product of this 
eighteenth century civilization, though she was modified 
by its influences. Only fifteen when she arrived in France, 
she had led a comparatively unconstrained life, and her 
education had been sadly neglected, her imperial mother 
being too much engrossed by state affairs to watch over 
her little girl's development. Unfortunately the young 
princess had no taste for reading, nor any idea that such 
an occupation could be desirable. This incapacity for 
amusing herself alone proved particularly unfortunate, 
making her dependent on others, and intensifying her 



112 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

girlish longing for friendships and intimacies often peril- 
ous in high places. She was quick to understand and 
ready at repartee, but deficient in judgment, a defect that 
had never been corrected. Lovely, gay, and innocently 
fond of fun, she had a kind heart and a sincere desire to 
oblige those who needed her help. She was particularly 
intimate with the Countess de Polignac and her set, and 
this exclusiveness was unfortunate in a court. Her ideal 
of happiness seems to have been a round of rural pleas- 
ures, simple, but very costly, like those she indulged in at 
the Trianon ; and she excited the resentment of the many 
who were not included in these parties. Some of the 
young men of the Polignac circle were among the first to 
speak jeeringly of the young queen when she chanced 
to offend them by haughtily repelling undue familiarity too 
frequently tolerated in that fast set. It has been said 
that the king's brother, the Count d'Artois, afterwards 
Charles X., wrote an indecent couplet about her that had 
a wide circulation. She often committed imprudences. 
For instance, the Prince de Ligne, father-in-law of Helene 
Massalska, tells of the way she used to leave intentionally 
her lady in waiting far behind in her horseback rides with 
him in the Bois de Boulogne. 

Of course this excited resentment, but the Prince de 
Ligne says emphatically that what was condemned as 
coquetry and undue love of admiration was only a hunger 
and thirst for friendly converse. Two men were especially 
favored by her, the staid and sedate Due de Coigny and 
the young Swede, Fersen, her coachman in the flight to 
Varennes. Every one knows how attractive she was in 
appearance, with her beautifully poised head, her noble 
and graceful bearing, her brilliant complexion, and winning 



FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION II3 

smile. Her feet and hands were also very beautiful, and 
the fresh, simple dresses of lawn and muslin that she 
made the fashion seemed peculiarly suited to her radiant 
loveliness. She could be very queenly, and in her sorrows 
showed heroic courage ; but Maria Theresa's imperial 
mood was not habitual with her. Sainte-Beuve quotes a 
speech she made, when as Dauphiness she heard a lady 
blamed for interceding with the shameless Du Barry to 
save her son's life. Marie Antoinette exclaimed, " It is 
just what I should have done in her place. If necessary, 
I could even have thrown myself at the feet of Gamore, 
the little negro page of the miserable favorite." And long 
afterwards she showed her mother's heart by refusing to 
escape from the Temple if her children must be left 
behind. 

Any one who had the great good-fortune to be present 
at the first representation of " Parsifal " at Bayreuth, with 
Wagner himself as stage manager, must vividly remem- 
ber the scene of the flower enchantment, that marvellous 
garden teeming with tropical vegetation, where houris, 
in the guise of flowers, wove themselves in living garlands 
about the hero who repulses them, and how when he at 
last triumphs over the supreme seduction the magic towers 
melt away, and a cold November wind whirls about in the 
dusty gloom great, brown withered leaves that flutter and 
fall to the ground, all that is left of those fair flowers. 

So the gay pageant of the eighteenth century in France 
vanishes in darkness and horror. That is the first impres- 
sion as you lose sight of those gay triflers who made the 
early life of Marie Antoinette a restless round of aimless 
frivolity, and who overruled the instinctive determination 
of Louis XVI. that the " Figaro " of Beaumarchais should 
not be represented. 



114 FRENCH WOMEN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

But, as at Bayreuth the everlasting hills stood out 
changeless against the background of the sky, pure and 
blue, so may we not feel that in toil and storm to France 
was confided the custody of the Holy Grail, the precious 
recognition of human brotherhood, of a common humanity 
uplifted then to abide with us once more and forever ? 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL" 



On the coast of Normandy, between Granville and 
Saint Malo, a mighty mass of granite rock, almost pyra- 
midal in shape, rises abruptly from the level sands that 
are covered by the sea at high tide. This rock was origi- 
nally called " Mont Tombe," or Tomb Mountain, from its 
resemblance to a tumulus. Tradition says, that in the 
year of our Lord 709, Aubert, a holy bishop of Avranches, 
a town not far off, had a vision commanding him to build a 
watch-tower on the top of Mount Tombe for the hea- 
venly sentinel, Saint Michael, to guard the coast, and 
warn sailors of the peril of the sea. He was told that he 
would find as a sign on the top of the mount, tied among 
the bushes, a young bull that had been stolen and hidden 
there ; that he was to return him to his rightful owner, 
and then to build a chapel large enough to cover all the 
ground trampled by the animal's feet. He at once re- 
paired to the mount, followed by his workmen, a multitude 
of peasants singing psalms and hymns. On their arrival 
they found the bull as they had been told ; but on the 
spot where they were directed to build, two enormous 
perpendicular stones were embedded. They tried in vain 
to dislodge them, and were beginning to lose heart, when 
twelve more men were seen climbing the steep crags. 

"5 



Il6 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL " 

It was Bain, a vassal of the good bishop, who had come 
to his help with his eleven stalwart sons. They worked 
anew with might and main, but the rock stood firm in 
spite of their efforts. Then the bishop called Bain and 
said to him, "Have you no other child?" "Yes; there 
is one left at home." "Why did you not bring him 
also?" "He was asleep in his cradle." "Go and get 
him," said the good bishop. When Bain came back with 
his child, the bishop took the little one in his arms, and 
pressed his tiny left foot softly on the great rocks, that 
immediately became loose, toppled over, and fell crashing 
to the ground below, where, it is said, a fragment can still 
be seen, bearing the impress of the baby's foot. So the 
chapel was built, and the bishop established twelve priests 
in a house adjoining, to praise God night and day, and he 
endowed the convent with broad lands inherited from his 
father. 

During the ravages of the Northmen, after the death of 
Charlemagne, the monks wore coats of mail, and drove the 
pirates away. From that time dates the village, with its 
houses like swallows' nests, clinging to the craggy rock 
or niched into the clefts at the base of the mount. In the 
old chronicles it is called " Pendula Villa," or Hanging- 
town. 

Charles the Simple gave his daughter Gisela in marriage 
to the Norman Rollo, and Mont Saint Michel was part 
of her dower. Fortunately the Christian princess con- 
verted her rude husband, and he protected the convent 
and enriched it with his spoils. So the soldier-monks 
became rich lords, and grew more and more negligent of 
their religious duties, till, in the time of the third duke, 
Richard, their conduct was a great scandal. With the 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 1 1/ 

consent of Lothaire, the king, Duke Richard turned them 
out, and gave their places to thirty Benedictine monks 
from the great Abbey of Jumieges. This was in 966, 
more than two hundred and fifty years after the founda- 
tion of Saint Aubert. 

Norgod, the Dane, Bishop of Avranches, had a great 
affection for the new abbot of Saint Michel, who was a 
holy man and a great builder, and they often met at low 
tide on the sands for friendly converse. One night, when 
the tide was high, and no one could get to the mount, the 
bishop, before going to sleep, looked from his window 
towards the monastery, and saw it wrapped in flames. 
Calling his canons, they passed the night sorrowing in 
prayer for the dead ; but, when the morning broke, the 
abbey stood untouched and fair in the sunshine and the 
bewildered bishop met his friend by appointment, as usual, 
on the sands beneath. That unearthly light has never 
been seen again ; but in modern times, when the holy 
pile was used as a prison, we are told that strains of 
celestial music were sometimes heard at night issuing 
from the deserted, empty church. 

In one of Uhland's ballads, he tells a pretty legend of 
" Mont Saint Michel : " how a poor mother, in pains of 
childbirth, was left behind in a precipitate flight of pil- 
grims before the swiftly rising tide, and how, when the 
tide went out, she was found safe, with her baby smiling 
on her arm, having been saved from the " cruel, crawling 
foam" by the miraculous interposition of the Virgin Mary, 
who had held them from harm in her veil. A curious, 
cylindrical column, a hundred feet high, erected with great 
difficulty on the shifting sands, commemorated this mir- 
acle, and withstood the action of the waves till the middle 
of the 1 7th century, when it was washed away. 



Il8 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL " 

There is another legend of a powerful, wicked baron, 
who laid waste and harried the abbey-lands. The abbot, 
instead of asking secular aid and driving him off by force 
of arms, instituted a service called " The Clamor," in 
which every day after mass he and all his monks, with 
" Miserere and Kyrie Eleison" appealed to heaven and 
asked for deliverance from this bad man. The baron 
knew of the " Clamor " from popular report, and at first 
seemed to care nothing about it ; but, as time went on, 
he grew exasperated, and one day rode out, at the head of 
his train, crossed the sands at low tide in military array, 
and sounded his horn under the walls. When the abbot, an 
unarmed old man, presented himself in answer to the sum- 
mons, the baron shouted, " Monk, is it true that you are 
so bold as to call down, every day, woe on me and mine?" 
" Yes," calmly answered the holy man ; " and I shall con- 
tinue to do so as long as you wickedly despoil my master 
and my patron, Saint Michael." Whether the baron saw 
the saint in person standing by his faithful servant, we are 
not told, but, falling on his knees, he cried, " Let me be 
henceforward your soldier ! " and, dismounting, received 
with all his followers the abbot's forgiveness and blessing. 

In the " Song of Roland," chanted at the battle of Hast- 
ings, we read of the fearful convulsions of nature, of the 
midnight darkness at noonday, and the shock felt from 
" Saint Michael's of the Mount to the fair Shrine of 
Cologne," when Roland died. Taillefer, who rushed into 
the conflict, singing "of Charlemagne and Roland and 
Oliver, and the brave barons who fell at Roncevaux," was 
in the knightly train of the Norman Baron Mortain, who 
bore the banner of " Saint Michael of the Mount " on that 
memorable day. 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL II9 

William the Conqueror and his sons were benefactors 
of the " Mount." Henry II. of England despoiled the 
community, but made ample restitution at the entreaty of 
his mother and his wife, and he was several times enter- 
tained at the abbey. Once he came accompanied by 
Thomas a Becket, to meet Louis VII., to arrange the mar- 
riage of his son with Marguerite of France, and then he 
left the Mount afterwards on his way to Avranches to do 
penance for the murder of the Archbishop. 

After the assassination of little Arthur of Brittany by 
his uncle, Philip Augustus summoned John as his vassal 
to appear and answer for the crime, and when the recreant 
King of England failed to do so, the French sovereign 
declared Normandy forfeit to the crown. From this time, 
Mont Saint Michel belonged once more to France. In 
the war that ensued the abbey was burned, taking fire 
from the conflagration of the village at the base ; but it 
was rebuilt by Philip Augustus at his own expense in joyous 
celebration of the acquisition, and to his munificence and 
the architectural genius of several abbots we owe the most 
magnificent " ex-voto " in the world, the " granite jewel " 
known as " La Merveille." This appendage to the shrine- 
fortress of Saint Michel consists of a marvellous structure 
three stories high, suspended in mid-air. The lower part, 
called the " Montgomeries," contains the cellars and hall 
of alms. In the second we see the Hall of the Knights, 
sometimes called the Hall of Pillars, while the whole is 
crowned by the cloisters, in which triple rows of slender 
columns are arranged with such skill that, starting from the 
angles of two squares of different dimensions, every pillar 
of the largest quadrangle comes in the centre of the arch 
of the smallest. The perspective groups them in threes, 



120 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 

and the vaulted roof is a series of triangles. The pillars 
of the colonnade against the walls are of granite, but the 
others are of various stones of different colors. The 
church, still higher, is built on a platform, of which the 
middle rests on the outer verge of the rock. The rest is 
supported by battalions of massive pillars and solid walls 
of masonry. The triforium is especially admired. Over- 
head a chime of nine bells in a lofty tower joyously pealed 
out, or tolled this invocation : — 

" Thou, who watchest o'er the flow 
Of the waters to and fro, 
In the hollow of thy hand 
Keep thy Pilgrims, as they go 
To the Shrine across the sand." 

On the topmost pinnacle stood a large silver-gilt statue 
of St. Michael mounted on a pyramidal pedestal. It 
could be seen from a great distance at sea. 

Mont Saint Michel has withstood many sieges. One of 
the most famous is that of Lord Scales, who invested the 
place for Henry V. He built a series of ports around 
the walls, and his enormous guns carried stone balls a 
hundred and sixty pounds in weight. Having made 
a breach with this formidable artillery, the Englishmen 
rushed forward to take the fortress by assault, but en- 
countered a wall of steel that withstood the fierce onset. 
They were twenty to one, but numbers availed little in so 
small a space. They were repulsed with great loss, pur- 
sued and driven back to their forts. When they raised 
the siege soon after, two of their great guns were cap- 
tured, and are still shown as trophies at the entrance of 
the abbey. 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 121 

During the religious war, after the massacre of " Saint 
Bartholomew," the Huguenots were determined to get 
possession of Mont Saint Michel. On the 22d of July, 
1579, almost all the villagers and monks had gone to a 
chapel at Ardevon to keep the feast of Mary Magdalen. 
They left in procession at daybreak, and at seven in the 
morning the porters unsuspectingly admitted a party of 
pilgrims, who seemed to have come from a distance, and 
who were brought across the sands by the regular guides. 
They laid aside their arms, as was customary, at the en- 
trance, and after breakfasting at the hostlery, ordered and 
paid for a high mass, at which they assisted with great 
apparent devotion. When it was over, they asked to see 
the relics and curiosities, and while these were being 
shown, all of a sudden a voice rang out, crying, " Strike ! 
Kill, kill ! " Whereupon, these pretended pilgrims, who 
were really Huguenots in disguise, produced concealed 
pistols, drew knives from their sleeves, slew the priest at 
the altar, and attacked the dismayed monks. The sanc- 
tuary and courts were full of smoke, and resounded with 
shouts, cries, and groans. Three of the Huguenots ran 
out on the ramparts and waved scarfs, a concerted signal 
for their friends outside. But those villagers who had 
not gone to Ardevon had heard the uproar, and now saw 
the strange pilgrims signalling to a troop of horsemen 
coming full gallop towards the mount. They instantly 
closed and barred the inner gate between them and the 
abbey, raised the drawbridge, let the portcullis fall, manned 
the walls, and prepared to resist. The false pilgrims could 
not get out, their friends could not get in, and, to make 
matters worse for the assailants, another band of mounted 
men came in sight, riding hard, and bearing the banner 



122 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 

of a valiant captain, Louis La Moriciere, a well-known 
friend of the " Mount." The Huguenot horsemen fled, 
and their friends, entrapped, sued for mercy. This was 
granted, though the men who slew the priest were after- 
wards executed, and some, fleeing through the intricate 
passages, met a violent death at the hands of those whom 
they had so treacherously assaulted. This story is some- 
times called "The taking and re-taking of Mont Saint 
Michel ; " but the fortress was never really captured. 

La Moriciere was now appointed governor, and two of 
the well-known Huguenot family of Montgomery, learn- 
ing that he was to be absent for a few days from his post, 
planned a new attack. Early one morning a cavalcade 
was seen crossing the sands, ladies richly dressed, appar- 
ently of high rank, mounted on pillions behind servants 
and guided by four fishermen. They appeared harmless 
enough ; but, in truth, all — ladies, servants, and fishermen 
— were Huguenots armed to the teeth. One who acted as 
major-domo came forward, and lifting his hat, said to the 
guard at the gate, " It is Mademoiselle de Saint Auviers, 
who has come to claim the protection of the dame La 
Moriciere in the present unsettled state of the country." 
While the man was speaking, one of the pretended maids 
slipped past the guard inside the gate. A soldier of the 
garrison chucked her under the chin ; but as he did so, 
cried out, " A beard, a beard ! " The beard belonged to 
a Scotchman, who forthwith planted his dagger in the 
breast of the soldier ; there was a general rush and meUe ; 
the garrison, taken by surprise, made a feeble resistance, 
and the masqueraders entered the place, leaving the two 
leaders, in women's clothes, behind to keep the outer gate 
till the elder Montgomery should arrive. He was already 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 1 23 

at hand with his light horse and cross-bowmen ; but before 
they came up, one brave citizen encouraged the towns- 
people to resist, crying, " Don't you see they are only 
women ? " 

They bore the leaders back and began to lower the port- 
cullis ; but, before it touched the ground, one of the two 
Huguenots succeeded in driving a ladder underneath. 
Through this narrow opening the men at arms crawled, 
the town was sacked and given up to pillage for a week. 
Meantime La Moriciere hurried back with a troop he had 
raised himself ; but they warned him that if he attacked 
the fortress his wife and children, who were in the town, 
should pay the penalty. He now bethought him also of a 
stratagem. Having inhabited the abbey, he knew that in 
a tower of " La Merveille," adjoining the chapel of Saint 
Aubert, there was an arrangement of wheels and pulleys 
used in lifting heavy provisions and articles for the use of 
the community. To gain access to this tower, he took 
possession one evening of the chapel, much to the delight 
of the Huguenots, who promised themselves to unearth 
him in the morning. But, during the night, the governor 
succeeded in opening communication with those above, 
when he and all his men were safely transferred by the 
pulleys to the interior of the fortress. Before daybreak 
they made a sudden sortie and rushed through the opened 
gate and down the steps into the town. The surprise was 
complete ; there was hardly time to call to arms before the 
steep street ran red with blood. The Montgomeries threw 
up barricades and fought bravely, but they were obliged to 
yield, and capitulated under the outer portal with the 
honors of war. The masquerading captains, however, nar- 
rowly escaped with their lives. In memory of this occu- 



124 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 

pation of the village for a week, the Montgomeries had 
three scallop shells of Saint Michael added to their coat of 
arms. The pulleys of " La Merveille" and the sortie of 
La Moriciere figure largely in the pictorial representations 
of that time. 

The next year Louis La Moriciere was killed at the 
siege of the neighboring town of Pontorson and a new 
governor was appointed for the " Mount," whereupon the 
Montgomeries contrived another plan to get possession 
of the fortress. For this purpose Gabriel de Montgomery 
made the acquaintance of a reckless, unprincipled soldier 
of fortune who promised for a large reward to enlist in the 
garrison and then to man the wheel and draw up him and 
his soldiers into the stronghold. After a time the man 
carried out the first part of his plan and entered the ser- 
vice of the governor ; but immediately, whether from sud- 
den remorse or expectation of a double reward, he confessed 
the whole scheme. The governor ordered him to go on 
and do exactly as he had promised. Every arrangement 
at last being complete on both sides, the wretched creature 
gave the concerted signal, and more than two hundred men 
crossed the sands unmolested, unperceived as they thought 
owing to a thick fog, and concealed themselves in the 
neighborhood of the pulley-tower. Gabriel de Montgom- 
ery was on hand, as gay as if bound on a party of pleas- 
ure. The traitor, too, was at his post, and at night the 
cable slowly descended. The boldest of the Huguenot 
band made himself fast to the rope, gave the signal, 
mounted, and disappeared in the yawning darkness. All 
was silence, but for the creaking as the cable wound and 
unwound. Sixty-eight men were drawn up, but still not 
a sound was heard. The leaders grew apprehensive, see- 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL 1 25 

ing by the thinned ranks that their own turn must soon 
come. They called anxiously to the man at the wheel, 
who answered, "All is well." "Throw me down a monk 
then," said Montgomery ; " there are enough of you up 
there to begin to go to work ; " and presently a rigid form in 
frock and cowl fell at his feet. He could not tell in the 
darkness that it was one of his own men who lay there 
dead ; but in vague alarm he called out again : " Before I 
go up I must speak to Rablotiere," designating one of his 
favorite soldiers, who had been among the first to ascend. 
It happened that the man in question was well known also 
to the governor, who had spared his life. He was now 
brought back to the mouth of the well, and the governor 
promised to make his fortune if he would only reassure 
his leader. But Rablotiere was a brave man, and when 
Montgomery called out : " What is the matter ? " he 
shouted down, " Treason ! Treason ! " Whereupon they 
who were left below lost no time in making the best of 
their way back to Pontorson. All the soldiers drawn up 
had been gagged and killed one by one ; but it is a relief 
to know that the governor spared the life of the brave 
Rablotiere. From this fearful slaughter the cellars of " La 
Merveille" acquired the name of the " Montgomeries." 

The abbey came out of the wars with crumbling walls 
and dilapidated piety. The military had so long super- 
seded the religious rule, that little devotion was left, and 
the services, mostly performed by hirelings, were spirit- 
less and irregular. The few monks who remained gave 
themselves up to feasting and dissipation, leading lives 
that would have disgraced even laymen in that age. Henri 
de Lorraine de Guise, a child five years old, was made 
abbot of Mont Saint Michel by the Pope, Paul V. 



126 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL " 

During the reign of Louis XIV. the abbey occasionally- 
received political prisoners, such as the kidnapped Ameri- 
can Patriarch, Avedik, or the wretched pamphleteer, 
Dubourg, who died here miserably in an iron cage. 

In 1793 the monks all fled, and the abbey was pillaged. 
It would have been given to the flames as well, but for 
the devotion of a band of volunteers from Avranches, who 
stood guard night and day, and saved the grand old pile. 
Under the empire it was used as a prison and peniten- 
tiary ; but in 1863 the convicts were sent elsewhere, and 
the bishop of Coutances received permission to restore 
religious worship in the desecrated shrine. He estab- 
lished there a Brotherhood of Missionary Fathers, who 
have ever since occupied the convent buildings, and who 
keep up the daily service ; but the entire property is 
owned and controlled by the government. Under these 
auspices for some time a judicious restoration has been 
going on. 

Formerly, as has been said, all visitors were obliged to 
cross the sands on foot, guides were needed on account 
of the dangerous and shifting quicksands, and only at low 
tide could they reach the " mount ; " but of late years a 
long dike has been built, access is always possible, and 
poetical peril has given way to prosaic safety. At the 
spring-tides, however, there is still a chance for a spice of 
adventure, and guides are occasionally once more in de- 
mand to carry travellers through the waves on their 
shoulders. The new facility of approach brings tourists 
as well as pilgrims every year in great numbers ; but 
there is a well-grounded fear expressed lest the washing 
of the waves, caused by the dike acting as a dam, may 
sap these venerable walls. The archaeologists on one 



"THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL \2J 

side, and the promoters of travel and pilgrimage on the 
other, have argued their cause before the Chamber of 
Deputies ; but the dike still remains. 

Leaving the railway at Avranches or Pontorson, you 
can take a wagon for " Mont Saint Michel." The first 
sight of the pinnacled, church-crowned, fortress-girdled 
rock, at a great distance across the level plain, is very 
imposing, and you see how wise the architects were not 
to lose one foot of such a grand pedestal. 

Entering by the gateway, guarded by the captured guns 
of Henry the V., you find yourself in the single, steep 
street of the old town at the base, alive at evening with the 
fishing population in their picturesque habiliments, while 
white coiffed Sisters of Charity pass silently along with 
their little orphan charges. The roofs are venerable with 
mosses and lichens, so that you can hardly tell the houses 
sometimes from the rock of which they seem to form a 
part, and as you pass under ruined gateways, and mount 
grass-grown steps, once trodden by Saint Louis and 
Duguesclin, the dike is forgotten, the nineteenth century 
seems far away, and you are deep in the " Middle Ages." 

On entering the inn, a clear fire is blazing close to the 
doorway on the left, lighting up all the bright saucepans 
and other belongings of the picturesque interior. There 
is a long, well-garnished spit revolving on the clean-swept 
hearth, carefully tended by our host in person, in white 
cap and apron. His wife, the pearl of landladies, now 
makes her appearance, capable, neat, pretty, and graceful, 
with an eye to everything, and a courteous word for every- 
body, as she flits back and forth from her husband at the 
fire to her guests in the dining-room opposite. You ask 
to be shown your rooms, and they are pointed out by the 



128 "THE MARVELS OF MONT SAINT MICHEL " 

charming hostess, who, leading you outside the door, 
shows you the sign of the establishment high on the 
perpendicular rock above your head, so high indeed that 
you are fain to adjourn the ascent till you can make it 
once for all after dinner. 

The evening walk on the ramparts, looking off at the 
star-lit sea, the glimpse of the community at prayers 
through the open portal of the old church, only illumi- 
nated by the lights in the choir where the dark-stoled 
figures are gathering in the gloom, the early morning ser- 
vice to which we were summoned by the convent bell, the 
long exploration, it is all delightful to remember, but hard 
to describe. 

As you mount from the vast crypts, with their massive 
pillars, to the wonders of the upper air, the forest of 
finials and the fairy lightness of the " escalier de dentelle" 
and look down at the hoary walls, where the seabirds 
build their nests, and up at the towers, waving from every 
nook and cranny with banners of graceful grasses, and 
pennons of gay wild flowers, it seems as if Titans must 
have co-operated with winged workmen to produce the 
wonderful whole. It is all indescribably beautiful, the 
interest deepens as you linger, " The knapsack of custom 
falls off your back," and the American tourist becomes 
in spirit a devout pilgrim at the ancient shrine of " Mont 
Saint Michel." 



PROVENCAL SONG 



Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth. — Keats. 

True it is that this one delicious line from the " Ode 
to a Nightingale " preserves for us the haunting music of 
that mediaeval strain which seven centuries have not made 
dull. The very name of Provence brings back those May 
days when the cliatelaine, the lady of the castle, having 
just plucked the first violet in her airy garden, saw with 
delight the trouvhe or troubadour, with harp or lute slung 
across his shoulders, toiling up the steep ascent to the 
rock fortress whence some sparrow-hawk of a baron 
sallied forth to pounce upon travellers, pillaging and pro- 
tecting the neighborhood by turns. On the evening 
of his arrival perhaps all the household — knights, squires, 
pages, ladies, pilgrims, and men-at-arms — gathered eagerly 
about him, in the paved court of the castle, to hear him 
chant his programme, or recite the new lay he had been 
brooding over all winter long in his humble home. 

For the young poet was often of low degree. Peire 
Vidal was the son of a leather-dresser, and the father of 
Bernard de Ventadour was a baker. His mother used to 
bring the wood to heat the ovens, and yet his impassioned 
songs found favor with Eleanor of Guienne, wife of Louis 

129 



130 PROVENCAL SONG 

VII. of France, and his poetical devotion followed her to 
England after her marriage with Henry II. Though the 
subject of the poem was frequently taken from the castle 
chronicle, the chatelaine herself was constantly the object 
of the troubadour's homage and somewhat conventional 
adulation. Quinet calls these lyrics "the epithalamium 
of the nobility and the people," and shows how the 
necessity of mystifying the expression of their feelings 
may account for the involved complexity of some of their 
love poems. 

It is true that not all the husbands were like the Lord 
of Roussillon, in the story of William de Cabestaing, who 
gave his wife her lover's heart to eat. Some seem to 
have befriended the gallant, and to have enjoyed the 
reflected celebrity of his poetical homage. Peire Vidal 
of Toulouse, the Don Quixote of troubadours, "the 
craziest man that ever was," says the chronicler, had 
an intimate friend, a certain Lord Barral. They called 
each other by the same name, "Raynier," and the 
troubadour was constantly at the castle. There he paid 
his court to his friend's wife, the beautiful Azalais, to her 
great annoyance, and her husband's infinite amusement ; 
for one of Peire Vidal's peculiarities was, that he regularly 
fell in love with every fair lady he saw. He, moreover, 
believed that they all returned his affection, though in 
truth they made a great deal of fun of him. One morn- 
ing early he saw Barral leave his room, and the door was 
ajar. Then he stole in, knelt down by the bed, and kissed 
the lady Azalais, who was lying there fast asleep. She 
looked up laughing, thinking it was her husband ; but 
when she saw Peire Vidal instead, she made such an out- 
cry and uproar that all her ladies came running in, and 



PROVENCAL SONG 131 

Peire Vidal escaped. The fair Azala'fs sent at once for 
her husband, and, bitterly weeping, demanded vengeance. 
"But Lord Barral," says the chronicler, "like a wise and 
valiant man as he was, took it as a joke, and laughed at 
his wife's excitement, reproving her for making such a 
noise about the matter." But she would not be appeased, 
and finally Peire Vidal, fearing that his life was in danger, 
went beyond the sea, and took the cross under Richard 
Cceur de Lion. There he distinguished himself by feats 
of arms, and also wrote very pathetic songs about the kiss 
he had snatched. At last the Lord Barral, who missed 
him sadly, prevailed upon his wife to allow him to return 
in safety to Provence, and even to promise to return in 
public the kiss he had taken. Then he sent word to 
Peire Vidal, who returned joyfully, and was most graciously 
received by Lord Barral and his wife, and the Lady 
AzalaTs gave him back the kiss he had taken, and he made 
a famous song about it. 

Schlegel says : " Every one talks of the troubadours, 
and nobody knows anything about them ; " but that can 
hardly be said now, since German scholars have turned 
their attention that way. These treasure-seekers in the 
debris of MSS., scattered by reformation and revolutions, 
are constantly unearthing beautiful fragments of the utter- 
ances of the first vulgar tongue that ever found expression 
in literature. The editors, too, of " Romania," Paul Meyer 
and Gaston de Paris, have spent many summers examin- 
ing the valuable collections in the public and private libra- 
ries of England, and during the winter have given to the 
world the results of their researches in the pages of their 
valuable quarterly. 

Provence enjoyed almost entire immunity from the rav- 



132 PROVENCAL SONG 

ages and disorders that prevailed in the tenth century ; 
and Languedoc was never invaded like the north of 
France. The mild Burgundian rule was a peaceful one, 
and the people dwelt in comparative freedom. Climatic 
influences too, the southern exposure, helped to ripen that 
beautiful language, "eldest daughter of the Latin," in 
which the Provencal poets gave to the world all the Celtic, 
Frankish, and Arabian legends, of which the air was full 
in those days. The stories of Arthur and the knights of 
the round table, of Charlemagne and his peers, first 
obtained currency through the troubadours. Eschembach, 
the minnesinger, in his " Titurel and Parceval," expressly 
acknowledges his indebtedness to the " Provencal Guyot ; " 
and he also criticises freely the Norman French version 
of " Chretien of Troyes," showing his familiarity with the 
"langue d'oil," as well as the " langue d'oc." 

William IX., Count of Poitiers, who lived in the eleventh 
century, is the earliest known troubadour ; and he writes 
in such a polished style that he had evidently found in his 
language a ready-made instrument, whose " music helped 
his verses best." Even with our imperfect knowledge of 
the pronunciation, we can readily understand how the 
stories of the "Holy Grayle" and the wars against the 
Saracens, conveyed through such a melodious medium, 
became popular in Italy, Spain, France, and England. In 
fact, these versions still embody for us the most complete 
expression of the religious and political life of the Middle 
Ages. 

It was in Provencal doubtless that Dante's Paolo and 
Francesca read of Lancelot ; and Petrarch and Petrarch's 
Laura were students of these old romances. Ariosto and 
Cervantes experienced and transmitted their fascination ; 



PROVENCAL SONG 1 33 

and, in our own language, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sir 
Walter Scott, Southey, Tennyson, and the realistic poets 
of the modern school, have quaffed deep draughts at the 
sources of French song. 

The cradle of art was also the cradle of religious lib- 
erty. These great lovers were great haters ; and Rome 
crushed the most fearless, eloquent, and uncompromising 
upbraiders of priestly corruption in the bloody crusade of 
the thirteenth century. In so doing, Mother Church 
imbrued her hands in the blood of her own offspring ; for 
hymns to the Virgin, and legends of the saints in rhyme 
and assonance, are among the earliest utterances of French 
poetry. The legends, or " prose " as they were called, 
were read in the churches till Charlemagne cemented his 
relations with Rome. Then the story of the Passion and 
the martyrdom of Stephen were alone retained, since they 
were to be found in the authorized version of the Scrip- 
tures. Some of the sermons quoted by Bartsch, in his 
" Chrestomathie Provencal e," are very artless and simple, 
particularly the one on the birth and presentation of the 
Virgin, — the text, as it were, of Titian's picture-poem. A 
" Confession," bearing date of the eleventh century, gives 
some idea of the quaintness and earnestness of these 
early rhymers : — 

O Lord, forgive me, for I trust 

Entirely to Thee. 
What I have done and said and thought, 

All my perversity, 

From natal and baptismal hour 

Down to the present day, 
To Thee, High Priest, Almighty God, 

I do bewail alway. 



134 PROVENCAL SONG 

The Evil One has written down, 
To keep me in his power, 

The wicked deeds and sinful thoughts 
Of every passing hour. 

Sweet Jesus ! for Thy Mother's sake, 

Thy pardon I implore, 
And by my youthful trespasses 

I will offend no more. 

From God, Thy Mother, and from Thee, 

I humbly mercy pray; 
For then the devil will be vexed 

Upon the judgment-day. 

Oh, keep me, in temptation's hour, 
From every shameful sin. 

Dear God, without Thy loving aid 
No soul can enter in. 

Sin is so strong, and we are weak, 
And I have faithless grown. 

O Lord, in my extreme distress, 
I cling to Thee alone. 



Lebeuf found the poem on Boethius — which is, ex- 
cept the oath of Louis the German, the oldest monu- 
ment of the French language — in the Benedictine Abbey 
of Fleury on the Loire, founded in the sixth century. He 
tells us that in the eleventh century this abbey boasted 
five thousand students, and each student was required 
every year to copy two MSS. for the library. Here was 
found the lost treatise of Cicero on the " Republic." 
Unfortunately for the interests of literature, one of the 
Colignys was abbot of Fleury in the sixteenth century, 
and under his auspices the friends of reform scattered to 
the winds the treasures of the richest library in France. 



PROVENCAL SONG 1 35 

Many fell into the hands of the Elector Palatine, and 
became the nucleus of the library of Heidelberg, and 
others, purchased by Christina of Sweden, are now in the 
Vatican. Some of these MSS. contain touching memorials 
of the transcribers. Here are a few lines found at the 
end of a beautiful MS. of the eleventh century: — 

To an end our work has come, 
Father, hear our orison ! 
Wearily we drop the pen, 
While the brothers chant "Amen." 
It may be that we aimed too high, 
Wanting in humility. 
In the coming judgment-day, 
Help us, Lord, we humbly pray ! 

The Provencal epic of " Gerard de Roussillon " is a 
poetical picture of one of the great rebellions which 
brought about the dissolution of the Frankish monarchy. 
It belongs to the second part of the Carlovingian romances, 
the first part comprising the wars of Charlemagne with 
the Saracens, and the second the revolts of the nobles 
against that great monarch's descendants. Neither series 
is much given to love passages, faithful pictures as they 
are of the anarchy of the Middle Ages ; but in " Gerard 
de Roussillon " they do occur. Gerard himself, and his 
heroic wife Bertha, are veritable historic personages. Her 
unwearied devotion to her husband makes her one of the 
most charming portraitures of the old romances. The 
circumstances of her marriage are curious, and throw 
light upon the singular customs of the time ; for they are 
simply related as matters of course, requiring no com- 
ment. Charles the Bald, turned into Charles Martel by 
the poet, loves and marries a lady who appears to be the 



I36 PROVENCAL SONG 

daughter or near relative of the Emperor of Constantino- 
ple. This lady and Gerard have long loved each other ; 
but, not to deprive her of a crown, he consents to her 
marriage with the Emperor, and resigns himself to take 
to wife Bertha, sister of his ladylove. Both marriages 
are solemnized at the same time, and when the hour of 
parting comes, an extraordinary scene takes place. On 
the point of separating, perhaps forever, from her friend, 
the newly made Empress wishes to give him a solemn 
assurance of her undying tenderness, and is joined to 
him in a sort of spiritual union. The fragment of this 
poem in Provencal begins with a description of the mar- 
riage with Gerard thus : — 

"At the break of day, Gerard led the Queen forth 
under a tree, and she took with her two counts, friends 
of hers, and her sister Bertha. 'Wife of the Emperor/ 
said Gerard, ' what do you think of my taking an inferior 
in your place ? ' 'It is most true, my lord, that you have 
made me an Empress, and that you have married my 
sister for love of me ; but she is also most worthy and 
noble. Listen to me, Counts Gervais and Bertelais, and 
you my sister, the confidante of my thoughts, and you, 
most of all, Jesus my Redeemer ! I take you all as 
sureties and witnesses that with this ring I give my love 
forever to the Duke Gerard, and make him my knight and 
seneschal ; and I declare before you all that I love him 
better than my father and my husband, and when I see 
him go away I cannot help weeping.' Then she placed a 
ring on his finger. From that time," the narrative con- 
tinues, "the love of Gerard and the Queen lasted without 
wrong-doing on either side, nor was there anything be- 
tween them but tender wishes and secret thoughts." 



PROVENCAL SONG 1 37 

The story goes on to describe the subsequent quarrels 
of the Emperor and his haughty vassal. At last Gerard 
has a price set upon his head, and, with his faithful wife, 
he is driven to take refuge among the charcoal-burners in 
the forest of Ardennes. There they live twenty years, 
and there are many touching passages — one where Gerard 
and Bertha in their wanderings come to a place where all 
the able-bodied men have been killed in the wars between 
him and Charles Martel, and he hears himself cursed by 
the desolate widows and orphans. At last Bertha per- 
suades her husband to return to the court, and seek the 
Emperor's pardon, reminding him what a powerful advo- 
cate he may expect in her sister ; and she gives him back 
the betrothal ring, which he has thought lost, but which 
she has kept safely in all their wanderings, and entreats 
him to make use of it. They reach the court in Holy 
Week, and on Good Friday evening, when the Empress 
goes barefooted to the dimly lighted vaulted chapel to 
hear the "Tenebrae" sung, Gerard draws near and makes 
himself known. "Then," says our author, "there was no 
more Good Friday for her ; she kissed him one hundred 
times upon the spot." She asks for her sister, who is 
not far off, and Gerard tells her all his wife has been to 
him these many weary years, and says he would have been 
dead twenty times over if it had not been for her. The 
Empress sends for a faithful servant, places Gerard and 
Bertha in safe keeping, tenderly caring for their com- 
fort, and the three spend the whole night in converse. 
Finally the Empress contrives to make her husband promise 
not to take vengeance on Gerard, and to restore his 
estates. 

Unlike the troubadours, the Norman French poets 



I38 PROVENCAL SONG 

seem to write in complete unconsciousness of the tur- 
moil around them. Here are two specimens of the anony- 
mous romances of the twelfth century : — 



On a long, bright day of May, 
Home repairing from the court, 
Franks from France, in bright array, 
Throng the roads in company. 
Past the Erembors' domain 
Rides Raynaut before the rest ; 
Never lifting up his eyes, 
Never drawing bridle rein. 
" O Raynaut, my friend ! " 

Tis the lady Erembors ; 
At the window sitteth she, 
On her knees the gorgeousness 
Of her bright embroidery. 
Far away she sees the throng, 
And Raynaut goes riding by. 
Pale with passion and with pain, 
She must speak, if ne'er again. 
" O Raynaut, my friend ! " 

" My friend Raynaut, there was a time 
When close beside my father's towers 
You never would have spurred your steed 
Without one word from Erembors." 
"Disloyal, noble lady : thou 
Most faithless art, forgetting me ! " 
" Sir Raynaut, stay ! I will be heard — 
I will make known my truth to thee. 
A hundred maidens I will bring 
And thirty dames on Holy Rood, 
To swear I have been true to thee ; 
Never a man save thee I loved. 
Believe me now, and with a kiss 
I'll show you what forgiveness is ; 
O Raynaut, my friend ! " 



PROVENCAL SONG 1 39 

Not in vain the lady pleadeth ; 
Quickly up the narrow stair 
Springs Raynaut, a manly figure : 
Light his beard and close-curled hair. 
Ne'er in all the land was seen 
Gallant of a goodlier mien. 
And he comes into the tower, 
And he weeps, beholding there, 
On a couch all worked with flowers, 
Statue still, exceeding fair, 
That proud lady Erembors. 
Tears of joy and not of pain 
Fall when lovers meet again : 
" O Raynaut, my friend ! " 

The following is a more regular, and we might almost 
say modern, measure ; but how quaint and mediaeval is 
the picture of the knight returning from the quintain, that 
famous tilting spot of the period ! 

ROMANCE OF THE TWO SISTERS. 

It was eve of Saturday, 

And the week was almost done ; 

Hand in hand the sisters twain 

Gaiete and Orriour came 

Out to bathe at set of sun. 

Breezes blow, the branches move ; 

Sweet the sleep of those who love. 

From the quintain, Childe Gerairs, 
Homeward wending, passeth by ; 
He hath seen and loved Gaiete 
At the fountain where they met. 
In his strong arms clasped has he 
Folded her right tenderly. 
Breezes blow, the branches move ; 
Sweet the sleep of those who love. 

" Orriour, when the water's drawn, 
Hie thee back into the town. 



140 PROVENCAL SONG 

Well thou knowest our wonted way, 
Thou mayest go, but I shall stay; 
Here far rather would I be 
With Gerairs who prizeth me." 

Weeping, with a bursting heart, 
Orriour has turned away 
All alone, for nevermore 
Gaiete goes with Orriour 
As she went but yesterday. 

" Sad the day that I was born," 
Moaneth Orriour; "woe is me! 
I have left my sister fair 
At the fountain with Gerairs. 
Would I brought her back with me." 

Then the knight and maiden went 
By the very shortest way 
To the city. Entering there 
Gaiete married Childe Gerairs 
In a haste brooked no delay. 
Breezes blow, the branches move ; 
Sweet the sleep of those who love. 

In the South there were many varieties of poems. 
Novellas were usually tales ; but there is one, called 
" Novas del Heretic," containing a doctrinal disquisition 
of a Dominican monk with an Albigensian heretic. Then 
the elaborate sixtine of Arnaut Daniel imitated by Dante 
and Petrarch, is truly verse in fetters. Besides these, 
there are " descorts," " pastorelles," " epitres," " retro- 
ensas," " romances," " serenades," " aubades," and " bal- 
lades." We give a specimen of the last : — 

Fair I am, and much it grieves me 
That my husband does not please me. 
Let me tell you why this sighing : 
Fair I am, 



PROVENCAL SONG 141 

And I want a husband boyish, 
Who will frolic when I'm foolish : 

Fair I am. 
Should I ever meet my lover, 

Fair I am, 
He my passion would discover, 

Fair I am. 
But this husband stern and grim, 
I am so ashamed of him 
That his absence would relieve me. 
If he died, it would not grieve me : 

Fair I am. 
But of one thing I am sure, 

Fair I am : 
Of the friend I loved before, 

Fair I am. 
Vainly hoping, I can only 
Weep because I am so lonely: 

Fair I am. 
Thus I would bespeak you fair, 

Fair I am, 
That this ballad far and near 

May be sung. 
And those fair ones who do know 
Of my love may tell him how 

Fair I am ; 
That to him my heart is given, 
And my hopes this side of heaven : 

Fair I am. 



The " tenson " is a dialogue in which two people de- 
fend, turn by turn, their respective opinions on some 
mooted point of love, chivalry, or morals. The question 
was either left undecided or referred to some court of 
love, presided over by a noble lady ; or else they abided 
by the decision of a fair and wise arbiter or arbiters 
chosen by the high contestants themselves. Sometimes 
it was a satirical, reproachful dialogue, and occasionally 



142 PROVENCAL SONG 

it was made the vehicle for the reciprocal accusations of 
lovers who had quarrelled. For instance, the famous 
" tenson " of the Countess of Die and Raimbaut, Count 
of Orange, said to have been imitated from Horace's 
" Donee gratus eram tibi." They were sometimes called 
" jeux-partis " and also " tourneymens " or poetical jousts, 
when more than two took part in the contest. The fol- 
lowing is an example : — 

Savari de Mauleon, a rich baron of Poitou, loved a noble 
Gascon lady, the Countess Guillemette de Benarges, who 
encouraged also the attentions of two other knights, Elias 
and Geoffroi de Rudel. One day, when all three were 
paying their court to her, the coquettish Countess made 
each one think himself especially favored. She looked 
tenderly at Geoffroi de Rudel, pressed the hand of Elias, 
and touched Savari de Mauleon' s foot lightly with her 
own. Neither suspected that his rivals had participated 
in his privileges ; but when they all went away together, 
Geoffroi and Elias boasted of the favors shown them. 
Savari listened in silence, and was inclined to think that 
he still had the advantage over the others. Without 
naming the Countess, he afterwards referred the question 
to Hugh de la Bachelleria and Gancelm Faidit. That 
is the subject of the following tenson or "tourney- 
men:" — 

Gancelm, a three-part question game 
I now propose to you and Hugh ; 
And you may choose and leave to me 
< Whichever you prefer to do : 
Three suitors has a lady fair; 
She smiles on all ; for when before her 
They all appear to pay their court, 
Each thinks himself the blest adorer. 



PROVENCAL SONG I43 

On one she looks with loving eyes, 
The second's hand is softly pressed, 
And laughingly her little foot 
Has touched the third, as if in jest. 
Decide, on judging these aright, 
Which one may be the favored knight. 

Gancelm Faidit. 
My Lord Savari, well you know 
That a kind look from loving eyes 
Comes from the heart and seeks the heart, 
Free from all guile and subtleties. 
And so I judge the lady's grace 
A hundredfold more given to him 
Than to the knight whom grasp of hand 
With courteous welcome ushers in. 
And as for touching of the foot, 
'Tis no love token to my mind : 
Most ladies are more serious 
When they to loving are inclined. 

Hugh de la Bachelleria. 
Gancelm, you plead as suits you best ; 
But I must say I disagree 
Entirely with what you say. 
The eyes, it always seems to me, 
Are meant for public use and show, 
Common exchange of feeling, when 
A gentle pressure of the hand 
Is meant for man, and not for men. 
A soft white hand withdrawn from glove, 
Given and taken for love's sake, 
Is interchange of true regard. 
Be sure your friend does not mistake. 
To Savari I leave to prove 
That pressure of the foot is love. 

Savari de Mauleon. 
Lord Hugh, since you have left the best, 
I take it without more ado. 
Touching the foot I shall aver 
Is proof of love both warm and true. 



144 PROVENCAL SONG 



That they were merry is a proof 
Of being free from craft or guile. 
Compared with pressure of the hand, 
Or glance of eye, or lady's smile, 
How meaning ! Cannot Gancelm see 
That loving thrives on mystery ? 

Gancelm Faidit. 
My Lord, before you criticise 
Lord Savari, I marvel much 
That you should loftily despise 
The sweet, fond looks of ladies' eyes. 
They are the faithful messengers, 
The trusty envoys of the lover, 
Revealing all the heart in fear 
Would never venture to discover, 
True medium of pure delight; 
And many a time, in hours of glee, 
You touch a foot in mirthful mood, 
Without a thought of coquetry. 

Hugh de la Bachelleria. 
Gancelm, you and Mauleon's Lord 
Both seem to me at war with love ; 
And those bright eyes whose cause you plead, 
And true as brilliant fain would prove, 
Have played the deuce with many a man. 
And I should not be overjoyed 
If that same lady, false as fair, 
In unconcerned frivolity, 
Had touched my foot the livelong year — 
Worthless to me as smile or tear. 
But the warm pressure of the hand, 
It is to me a hundredfold 
More worth the having. Can the heart 
Choose such a faithful messenger 
Thus to enact a traitor's part ? 
Gancelm, I ask for no appeal, 
Because I need no advocate. 
I have one loyal, loving judge, 
And I can well afford to wait. 
You two alone have named the three, 
So judge for you is not for me. 



PROVENCAL SONG I 45 

It is evident that ladies were accustomed to act as 
judges of these vexed questions. They presided too over 
the courts of love, where they professed to abide by the 
code of laws intrusted first to King Arthur. 

No troubadour is more justly celebrated than Bertrand 
de Born, the stormiest spirit of the thirteenth century, 
and the most turbulent and ungovernable of French 
barons. He was Lord of Hautefort, an almost impreg- 
nable rock fortress in the bishopric of Perigord, and had 
a thousand men-at-arms at his bidding. He constantly 
contrived to make trouble between the courts of France, 
Spain, and England, encouraging the children of Henry II. 
to rebel against their father. He was the especial friend 
of the young King Henry, Duke of Guienne, surnamed 
" Court Mantel," who was crowned during his father's 
lifetime. Dante calls Bertrand de Born the " new Achi- 
tophel of this modern Absalom." After Henry's early 
death he wrote this elegy or " complainte : " — 



LAMENT OF BERTRAND DE BORN FOR THE DEATH OF 
THE SON OF HENRY II. OF ENGLAND. 

If all the mourning and the tears, the woe, 

The sorrow, and the sin, the misery 
Could be collected of these troublous times, 

It would be light to our great grief for thee. 
Young English king! whose fame doth still survive, 

Bright through thy clouded youth's extreme distress, 
This gloomy world has grown as black as night. 

We had not wept so did we love thee less. 

The jocund soldiery stand dumb with woe ; 

Hushed is the troubadour's, the jongleur's song; 
They both have found in death a mortal foe, 

Whose fatal grasp on thee has been too strong, 



I46 PROVENCAL SONG 

Young English king ! whose generous, lavish hand 
Made princes seem like misers. Not for thee 

Can sorrow half enough this stricken land : 
Not with the tears of the whole century. 

O potent Death ! fell cause of all our woe ! 

Thou art vainglorious to have won for thee 
The noblest knight that trod this earth below, 

Light of our eyes, the flower of chivalry ! 
Young English king ! I would to God thy name 

Were yet a rallying cry, and those who shame 
Brave men, whose death would be a great relief, 

Were gone instead ; then were no cause of grief. 
Degenerate age ! so full of mortal woe; 

If love be absent, joy is all a cheat. 
Since all things end in suffering, every day 

Is worth less than its fellows. At thy feet, 
Young English king ! the valiant and the brave, 

The world may sit in wonder ; for they know, 
Now that thy loving heart is in the grave, 

None live like thee to cheer this world below. 

To Him who came unto this world of woe, 

And brought salvation to the sons of men 
By His own death, to our liege Lord we bow, 

And here implore for the young English king 
An unconditioned pardon and a place 

High in the ranks of the redeemed, with men, 
Brothers in arms for nobleness and grace, 

Where never wrath or weeping comes again. 

We find the following anecdote in Raynouard's " Bio- 
graphies des Troubadours." King Henry of England 
besieged Bertrand de Born in his castle of Hautefort, and 
brought down all his engines of war against him ; for he 
wished him great harm because he believed that Bertrand 
had incited the young king, his son, to rebellion against 
his father. And they razed the walls and took the castle, 
and Bertrand and all his men were brought prisoners 



PROVENCAL SONG 1 47 

before the tent of King Henry. The King received him 
very coldly, and said scornfully : " Bertrand, I have heard 
that you said that yOu never needed to use more than half 
the wit at your command. Now, methinks, you are at 
fault." "I did say so, and you speak truly, my lord," 
answered Bertrand. "Now," said the King, "I should 
say you were at your wit's end." " My lord," said Ber- 
trand, " I am indeed most destitute." " How is that ? " 
said the King. "My lord," said Bertrand, "the day 
when the young king, your valiant son, died, I lost all I 
had in the world, and the use of all my faculties." And 
when the King heard what Bertrand said the tears streamed 
from his eyes, and he felt such a pain in his heart that he 
swooned away. And when he came to himself he cried 
out weeping, " Lord Bertrand, Lord Bertrand ! you are 
right ; it is most true that you lost all in losing my son, 
for he loved you better than any man in the world ; and 
for his sake I restore to you your freedom, and your lands, 
and your castle, and your place in my favor ; and I give 
you, moreover, five hundred marks of silver to make 
amends for the injury you have received at my hands." 
Then Bertrand fell at his feet and returned him thanks, 
and the King went away with his whole army. 

We give below a famous "sirvente" of Bertrand de 
Born. The sirventes were generally satirical or declama- 
tory political poems, and were occasionally abusive of 
persons in power. " Papiol" was the favorite jongleur of 
Bertrand, and " Yes and No " was his name for Richard 
Cceur de Lion : — 

I like it well, the sweet spring-time, 
That brings the leaves and flowers, 
And I like well the carolling 



I48 PROVENCAL SONG 

Of birds, their songs re-echoing 

Through groves and leafy bowers. 

I like it well when, on the mead, 

Tents and pavilions shine; 

And in my very heart I like, 

When horse and horseman armed to strike, 

Stand in a gleaming line. 

I like it well when raiders swoop 

Down on the herdsmen flying. 

I like it when the angry guard 

In hot pursuit is hieing. 

Great joy it bringeth me 

When strongholds old, by armies bold, 

Beleaguered I can see ; 

When toppling walls uprooted fall, 

And on the shore I see, 

Beyond the ditch and palisades, 

The watchful enemy. 

A good knight also pleaseth me, 
When first he rides into the fray, 
With horse in armor fearlessly ; 
For well he shows his men the way, 
With such undaunted bravery, 
That, when they come upon the field, 
Each man would rather die than yield, 
And follows willingly ; 
For who would be esteemed a knight 
Must deal hard blows in many a fight. 

Lances and swords, gay waving crests, 

Surge in the battle's van, 

And shields dismantled and pierced through. 

The blows are neither faint nor few, 

Well dealt by knights of valor true, 

Contending man to man. 

And frightened horses loose are flying, 

Charging among the dead and dying. 

No count of lineage high 

But feels, rejoicing in the strife, 

Far better death than shameful life. 



PROVENCAL SONG 1 49 

I tell you, better far than sleep, 

Or sounds of revelry, 

I like to hear the shout ring clear, 

" Have at them, till they flee ! " 

Impatiently the horses neigh, 

'Neath shelter of the wood, 

While dying men choke up the moat : 

Little and great are there afloat, 

The grass all stained with blood ; 

And knights upon the ground are dying — 

Transfixed with spears where they are lying. 

Gallant nobles yield as pledges 

Castles, towns, and villages. 

Ere you go to war anew, 

Papiol, I bid thee go 

Straightway back to " Yes and No." 

Say, from one who understands, 

Peace hangs heavy on our hands. 

It will be seen that the troubadours were not all of 
lowly birth. When the aristocracies of rank and genius 
were united, they made the ideal man of the time. Richard 
Cceur de Lion was a troubadour of no mean pretension. 
The following lament, written by him in captivity, when 
he was thrown into prison on his return from the crusades 
by the Emperor of Germany, exists in Norman French 
and also in Provencal : — 

A man in prison never sings so well 

As though he were not in captivity; 

But still for comfort he may make a song. 

My friends, though many, are but scant in gifts. 

It is a shame, for want of ransom here, 

Two years I am a prisoner. 

They know it well, my liegemen and my barons, 
The English, Normans, Poitevins, and Gascons, 
That there is none so poor among them all 
Whom I would leave in chains for lack of gold. 
I do not say it as an accusation, 
But here I still am prisoner. 



I50 PROVENCAL SONG 

I hold it now to be a certain truth, 
Dead men and prisoners have no kith or kin. 
For want of money that they leave me here 
Is bad for me, but worse it is for them. 
When I am dead they will be greatly blamed, 
I was so long a prisoner. 

It is not strange that I am sad at heart ; 

For my liege-lord doth keep my land in turmoil. 

If he bethought him of our mutual oath, 

It is most certain that no longer here 

Could I be held a prisoner. 

They know it well, the Anjou and Touraine, 
Who bear them bravely in their stalwart youth, 
That far from them I still am tethered here. 
They used to love me; now they love me not. 
No more these plains are famed for feats of arms, 
While I am held a prisoner. 

My friends, whom loving once I always love, 
Those of Cahors and those of Percherain, 
Tell me, my song, are they not true to me ? 
Was I to them e'er false or hollow-hearted ? 
If they war on me, they are worse than wicked, 
So long as I am prisoner. 

My countess-sister, your liege-lord in durance 

Salutes you, praying you may be in keeping 

Of Him to whom I make my last appeal, 

By whose will I am prisoner. 

I do not mean by this the dame of Chartres, mother of Louis. 

The student of manners and customs, no less than the 
philologist, finds much to interest him in these almost 
unexplored regions of old French poetry. That we have 
hitherto neglected the study is not so strange as that 
modern French authors should contentedly date from the 
age of Louis XIV., ignoring their inheritance of the 
richest, sweetest literature of the Middle Ages. 




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